最低工资标准与制造业产能利用率

Research on the Impact of Minimum Wages on Chinese Manufacturing Capacity Utilization Rate

本文将最低工资制度改革与制造业产能过剩问题相联系,使用中国企业级微观数据系统地评估了最低工资标准上涨对企业产能利用率的影响及其作用机制。本文发现,最低工资标准上涨显著提升了企业产能利用率,且这一提升效应随最低工资制度实施时期的延长而增强。从异质性上看,最低工资标准上涨的产能利用率提升效应,随最低工资暴露程度(上一期企业平均工资低于所在城市最低工资的差异程度)的提高而增大。另外,最低工资标准上涨对劳动密集型企业产能利用率的提升作用更大。在作用机制上,最低工资标准上涨通过提高企业生产效率、增加员工在职培训、改善企业管理效率以及促进企业对外直接投资等途径促进了企业产能利用率的提升。最后,本文还在城市行业层面进一步研究了最低工资标准上涨对总体产能利用率的影响,发现最低工资标准上涨促进了城市行业总体产能利用率的提升。进一步检验表明,最低工资标准上涨主要通过促进落后产能企业的淘汰提高了资源再配置效率,进而促进了总体产能利用率的提升。

Overcapacity has become a deep problem that seriously puzzles China's sustainable economic growth,and it is also the focus of the current macro adjustment.For a long time,our country government attaches great importance to the management and prevention of overcapacity problem.The report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China pointed out that“we should adhere to the theme of promoting high-quality development and organically combine the implementation of the strategy of expanding domestic demand with deepening supply-side structural reform”.Improving capacity utilization is the fundamental way out of overcapacity and the key to promoting high-quality development.In 2004,China's Ministry of Labor and Social Security adopted and implemented the Provisions on Minimum Wages,which promoted the minimum wage system to all parts of the country,and the minimum wage level in prefecture-level cities has been greatly increased.This paper takes the implementation of the minimum wage system in 2004 as the background,explores the possible path of improving the capacity utilization rate of China's manufacturing industry,and provides new ideas for effectively governing and resolving the problem of overcapacity in the future.These works have important theoretical value and practical significance.We investigate the impact of minimum wage hikes on Chinese firm capacity utilization rate(CUR hereafter)and explore the mechanisms based on Chinese firm level data.We have four main findings to report.First,minimum wage hikes significantly raise firm CUR,and such an impact is increasing as the implementation period of the minimum wage system increases.Second,the heterogeneity analysis demonstrates that the CUR effect of minimum wage hikes is increasing with the treatment intensity.In addition,the promoting impact of minimum wage hikes on firm CUR is more pronounced for labor-intensive firms.Third,we explore the mechanisms through which minimum wage hikes affect firm CUR,and find that minimum wage hikes tend to improve production efficiency,enlarge the on-the-job training,improve management efficiency as well as promote firm outward direct investment,all of these factors jointly raise firm CUR.Finally,this paper further investigates the impact of minimum wage hikes on aggregate CUR at the prefecture-industry level,the results show that minimum wage hikes also significantly foster aggregate CUR growth,and the improvement of resource reallocation efficiency plays an important role The further test shows that minimum wage hikes raise resource reallocation efficiency mainly through promoting the exit of the firms with backward production capacity,and consequently fosters aggregate CUR growth.The above conclusions mean that the Chinese government can guide the manufacturing enterprises to increase innovation capability by improving the wage guarantee system and moderately increasing the minimum wage standard,encourage firms to“go globally”,and accelerate the market-oriented reform,so as to promote the transformation and upgrading of enterprises and improve the capacity utilization rate.Our paper makes the following four contributions.First,from the perspective of research,the existing literature mainly focuses on the impact of the increase in the minimum wage standard on corporate decision-making behaviors such as employment and wages,corporate profitability,corporate innovation,corporate productivity,and corporate export,while few scholars pay attention to whether and how the increase in the minimum wage standard affects the capacity utilization rate of enterprises.This paper systematically evaluates the economic effects of the increase in the minimum wage standard from the perspective of the capacity utilization rate of China's manufacturing industry.Second,in terms of identification methods,this paper not only uses the difference-in-difference(DID)method to identify the causal effect of the increase in the minimum wage standard on the capacity utilization rate of enterprises,but also further strengthens the causal effect identification by constructing instrumental variables,thus obtaining more reliable research conclusions.Third,this paper systematically analyzes and verifies the mechanism of how the increase in the minimum wage standard affects the capacity utilization rate of enterprises from multiple aspects,which is helpful to deepen the understanding of the internal relationship between the increase in the minimum wage standard and the change in the capacity utilization rate of enterprises.Fourthly,in order to more comprehensively evaluate the relationship between the increase in the minimum wage standard and the capacity utilization rate,this paper further studies the impact of the increase in the minimum wage standard on the overall capacity utilization rate at the urban industry level,and finds that the improvement of resource reallocation efficiency plays an important role.This novel finding undoubtedly has important policy implications for effectively governing and resolving the problem of overcapacity in the future.