社会网络异质性与人力资本误配

Heterogeneity of Social Networks and Mismatch of Human Capital

人力资本是经济增长的关键要素,但现实中大多数发展中国家由于未能实现人力资本最优配置,从而难以完全释放人力资本的经济增长效应。本文从中国劳动者使用社会网络求职的特征事实出发,探讨了社会网络关系通过影响劳动者微观就业选择,继而影响行业间人力资本配置效率和宏观失业率的问题。本文研究表明,社会网络连接的信息异质性会降低失业率,但不影响行业间的人力资本配置;社会网络连接的行为互惠性由于在人岗匹配时会增大协调性摩擦,从而可能造成行业间“高才低配”或“低才高配”型的人力资本误配,并使失业率提高。实证分析中,使用CLDS、中国城市数据库等数据,本文认为,劳动者求职时使用社会网络连接的行为互惠性会造成服务业内人力资本“高才低配”,并会降低其就业率,而信息异质性则会增大求职者就业概率。

Economic growth depends on the increase and rational allocation of production factors,and human capital is a key production factor for economic growth.Through accumulation and reallocation,human capital can greatly promote economic growth.Since the promotion of nine-year compulsory education and the expansion of college/university enrollment,China has accumulated plenty of high-level human capital,and the Chinese economy has achieved rapid growth.Although the accumulation of human capital in China has made remarkable progress,the economic growth effect released by the accumulation of human capital is gradually weakened due to the population structure such as the declining birth rate and population aging.Therefore,the reallocation of human capital will gradually become an important way for human capital to promote economic growth.A large number of studies have shown that it is difficult for developing countries to achieve the optimal allocation of human capital due to various market frictions.The research of Chinese scholars also shows that there is an efficiency loss of human capital allocation between industries and cities in China.By constructing a general equilibrium analysis framework that embeds social networks into the targeted search model of heterogeneous labor between industries,and using measurement methods such as Probit,IV-Probit,and IV-2SLS on the data of China Labor-force Dynamics Survey(CLDS)and Chinese city data,we study the influence of social networks on the mismatch of human capital and unemployment rate from both theoretical and empirical aspects.There are two reasons to study how social networks affect the mismatch of human capital.One is that social networks can be involved in workers'job hunting;the other is that job hunting through social networks is one of the main ways for Chinese workers to find jobs.In the research,according to the information transmission function and behavioral reciprocity function of social networks,this paper divides the attributes of social network connection into information heterogeneity and behavioral reciprocity,which is called the heterogeneity of social networks.Furthermore,according to the heterogeneity of social networks,this paper distinguishes the different properties of strong ties and weak ties:strong ties has weak information heterogeneity and strong behavioral reciprocity,while weak ties has strong information heterogeneity and weak behavioral reciprocity.The research shows that when the proportion of strong-tie-workers working or finding jobs in the technical industry is greater than the proportion of vacancies in the technical industry,it will cause a mismatch called“high-productivity workers working in lowproductivity firms”between the technical and non-technical industries,and on the contrary,it will cause a mismatch called“low-productivity workers working in high-productivity firms”between the two industries.We also conclude that information heterogeneity reduces the unemployment rate,while behavioral reciprocity increases the unemployment rate.This paper shows that as an informal institution,social network has an important impact on human capital allocation,which expands the scope of previous research which mainly focuses on the mismatch caused by the distorted price system.In terms of research conclusions,this paper first proposes the general rule of the influence of information heterogeneity and behavioral reciprocity on human capital allocation and the unemployment rate rigorously and innovatively summarizes the theoretical conditions leading to different types of mismatches of human capital.Moreover,different from the existing studies that focus on the impact of information transmission function on the unemployment rate,this paper also discusses the impact of behavioral reciprocity function and comprehensively obtains the impact of the heterogeneity of social networks on the unemployment rate.The analysis framework of the impact of social networks on human capital allocation and unemployment rate will also serve as a reference for subsequent research.In addition,this paper has policy implications for improving the recruitment information service and standardizing the letter of recommendation method.