最低工资、机器人应用与劳动收入份额——基于上市公司经验证据

Minimum Wage, Robot Application and Labor Income Share: Evidence from Listed Companies

《财经研究》2022年48卷第12期 页码：106-120 online：2022年12月3日

作者

中：王静1,2 , 王怡静1 , 宋建1

英：Wang Jing1,2, Wang Yijing1, Song Jian1

作者单位：1. 南京审计大学 经济学院，江苏 南京 211815; 2. 上海交通大学 安泰经济与管理学院，上海 200030

摘要及关键词

摘要：目前中国机器人使用量为世界之最，机器人的使用一方面促进了经济增长效率，另一方面还会对劳动力产生替代。人们不禁担心劳动要素能否分享经济增长的成果，即经济不断增长的同时劳动收入份额会发生何种变化。现有研究关注了机器人应用对劳动者收入的影响，也关注了最低工资对劳动者产生的保护作用。那么机器人使用率越来越高的情形下，最低工资是否对劳动者收入还具有保护作用尚未有研究涉及。文章对此问题进行考察，从理论和实证两方面分析与检验机器人应用如何影响最低工资对企业劳动收入份额的补偿效应。实证研究发现，最低工资上涨显著提升了企业劳动收入份额，这种促进效应会随着机器人渗透度的不断增加而降低，并且在规模大、工资水平低、机器人渗透率高、资本密集型行业中表现得更显著。企业工资率是可能的影响渠道，机器人应用促进了高学历员工替代低学历人员，上述发现是对企业工资率影响渠道的一种补充与验证。文章基于机器人广泛应用的现实，重新考察最低工资对劳动收入份额的综合影响，做出了一定的边际拓展，为实现人机协作和劳动力充分分享经济增长成果提供了借鉴。

关键词：最低工资; 机器人应用; 劳动收入份额

Summary: Minimum wage system is the legal guarantee for workers to obtain labor remuneration, and exploring the impact of accelerating robot application is an important proposition. The impact of minimum wage on labor income share has attracted much attention, but with the increasing application of robots in recent years, it has not been widely and deeply discussed, especially the internal mechanism from the level of micro firms. This paper constructs a comprehensive theoretical framework model of minimum wage and robot application affecting labor income share, and combs the impact mechanism of minimum wage on labor income share and the moderating effect of robot application on the impact of minimum wage from the two aspects of wage rate and labor productivity. Using the data of listed companies from 2012 to 2019, manually collecting the minimum wage data of prefecture-level cities, and combining the data of the International Federation of Robots (IFR), this paper empirically tests how robot application affects the compensation effect of minimum wage on labor income share by building tool variables, replacing core explanatory variables and explained variables, and conducting a series of heterogeneity analysis. The findings are that: (1) The increase of minimum wage significantly increases labor income share, and robot application weakens the promoting effect of minimum wage on labor income share. The compensation effect of minimum wage on labor income share will decrease with the continuous increase of robot penetration. (2) Heterogeneity analysis shows that robot application significantly reduces the compensation effect of minimum wage on labor income share in large-scale firms, low-wage firms and capital-intensive industries. In small and medium-sized cities and large cities, robot application inhibits the compensation effect of minimum wage on labor income share, while in mega-cities, robot application strengthens this compensation effect. (3) The increase of minimum wage significantly increases the wage rate, which verifies that the wage rate is the channel through which the minimum wage affects labor income share. Robot application promotes the demand of highly-educated staff to replace the demand of low-educated staff, which is a supplement and verification of the influence channel of wage rate. This paper provides new ideas and references for China’s labor protection policy and robot industry development policy. The marginal contributions of this paper are as follows: First, it explores the impact of minimum wage on labor income share from robot application, which enriches the existing research on income distribution and labor income share. Second, it constructs a model for the effect of robot application on the minimum wage, which verifies how robot application affects the compensation effect of minimum wage on labor income share, and provides direct evidence of the effect of robot application from the micro level. Third, it verifies that wage rate is the channel through which robot application reduces the compensation effect of minimum wage on labor income share, which provides implications for understanding the evolution of labor income share.

Key words:minimum wage; robot applicaion; labor income share

其他信息

DOI：10.16538/j.cnki.jfe.20221014.301

收稿日期：2022-05-11

基金项目：江苏省社科基金一般项目（21EYB014）；江苏高校“青蓝工程”优秀青年骨干教师（2021）；江苏省研究生科研与实践创新计划项目（KYCX22_2111）

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