Labor Share Of Income And Structure Of Export Commodities

It has been three decades since the introduction of the strategies of "opening up" and reformation. At the same time, China’s foreign trade has expanded rapidly, when the export of manufactured goods is far more than the primary products. As the share of labor-intensive exports is falling while the capital and technology-intensive exports are rising, the structure of export commodities is undergoing profound changes which promote the synchronous growth of China’s national income. But along with the changes in the structure of export commodities, China’s labor share of income (labor income share of GDP) is declining.These two phenomenon has already caused the attention of domestic scholars, this paper discusses the impact of foreign trade structure of China’s labor income share and it can be divided into six chapters:The first chapter outlines the background of this paper’s subject and the significance of the research, and provides the research method, the structure and the innovation points of this paper.The second chapter gives a systematic review and summary about the theory and empirical research of scholars at home and abroad. We can see that the theoretical and empirical research of foreign scholars have been more mature, and domestic research from the angle of foreign trade of China labor income share decline is gradually warming, but the conclusion and the experience of most of the literature is not consistent.The third chapter mainly combines with Heckscher-Ohlin Theorem Stolper-Samuelson Theorem, and affects of biased technological progress on the labor share of income to analyse the direct and indirect effects of the international trade and structure of export commodities changes on the labor share of income theoretically.The fourth chapter makes a historical investigation of structure of export commodities and labor share of income.Firstly it describes the current situation of China’s structure of export commodities and the reasons for the change, Then it gives the definition of the labor share of income, describes and select the calculation method.Next it analyses the present situation of China’s labor share of income. Data shows that China’s share of labor income decreased year by year. Finally it sums up the impact of the decline of the labor share.The fifth chapter is on the premise of theoretical analysis and uses the panel data of China’s thirty provinces (municipalities and autonomous regions) in1997-2011, make the manufactured goods’ proportion of total exports as an indicator to measure the structure of export commodities, do the empirical analysis of the impact of the labor share of income of the export commodity structure while taking the capital-output ratio, macro tax burden, ownership structure and industrial structure as control variables.On the basis of theoretical analysis and empirical test, the sixth chapter draws some conclusions of this paper:the structure of export commodities has negative effect on the labor share of income, capital-output ratio, macro tax burden and ownership structure is not conducive to the gains of labor share, and increase the proportion of secondary and tertiary industries will increase the share of labor income. Based on the results, this paper gives some relevant policy recommendations.