The Impact Of Export Sophistication On Wage Gaps In China

With the deepening of trade globalization,developing countries have integrated into the world economic system and made global production.According to traditional theory,trade will bring about changes in labor factor compensation and reduce income inequality.However,in the empirical study of emerging economies including China,it is found that,with economic growth,the income inequality of developing countries is becoming more and more serious.According to the HO theory,each country specializes in the production and export of products with its own advantages in terms of elements,so as to increase the remuneration of this element.Then the wages of labor force in developing countries with labor-intensive advantages will increase,and the income gap will narrow.However,in emerging countries such as India,Russia,Mexico and Indonesia,the widening income gap has expanded with the rapid development of trade.Taking China as an example,in the past 40 years of reform and opening up,while achieving the miracle of economic development,the continuous expansion of income gap has become a problem that can not be ignored.At present,studies on the impact of trade on income disparities in the international economics community mainly focus on whether trade expands the income gap,analyzes the causes of the widening income gap,and the influence mechanism of trade on the income gap expansion.However,due to differences in research perspectives,data integrity,and index measurement methods,these issues have not reached a completely unanimous conclusion.Based on the existing industrial enterprise database and customs database,from the perspective of export technical complexity,this paper chooses labor wage gap as the research object,and makes a systematic research on the relationship between export trade and income gap.The following three important questions were answered:Does the development of China's foreign trade really lead to an increase in the wage gap? What kind of role does the export technology complexity play in the above economic phenomena? What are the impact mechanisms of export technical complexity on the wage gap?This paper analyzes the basic issue of “the impact of foreign trade on the wage gap” and uses the theory of specialized division of labor,the biased theory of technological progress,and the heterogeneous enterprise framework to discuss the general equilibrium model of trade on the labor market from a theoretical point of view.The reality of “expanding exports—increasing technology spillovers—expanding the demand for wages for skilled labor—wage gaps widening”has been verified;At the three different levels of the enterprise,industry,and region,it is verified from an empirical point of view that the complexity of export technology has a significant positive effect on the wage gap of skilled labor,and supports the research conclusions of trade in income gap expansion in the existing literature;From the point of view of the differences in trade methods,differences in the nature of enterprises,industry differentiation,and regional differences,the paper analyzes the differential performance of the technological complexity of export-oriented wage gap widening.On this basis,it further discusses the specific correlation mechanism between the complexity of export technology and the wage gap,and takes into account the impact mechanism of different factors such as corporate profits,total factor productivity,and foreign direct investment on the skill-based wage gap.In the enterprise-level empirical analysis,using the combined Chinese industrial enterprise database,through a fixed effect model analysis,it is found that the technical complexity of product exports has a significant positive effect on the wage gap of skilled labor,that is,the technical complexity of product exports has significantly expanded the wage gap of the skilled labor force.On this basis,the classification regression is carried out from two aspects of trade mode and enterprise ownership form,and the result of classification regression analysis is consistent with the above conclusion.In the industry-level empirical analysis,using industry segmentation industry data,regressions is conducted with the average wage gap between the industry and the skilled and unskilled labor wage gap in the industry.It is found that the complexity of the manufacturing industry's exports has a positive effect on the average wage differential in the sub-sectors of the manufacturing industry and on the wage gap between skilled and unskilled labor within the industry.On this basis,regressions is carried out on three industries,including labor-intensive,capital-intensive,and technology-intensive,according to the different intensities of manufacturing factors.The results of classification regression are consistent with the above conclusions.In the empirical analysis at the regional level using the customs trade database,it is found that as the technical complexity of manufacturing exports in various regions of China continues to increase,the impact on the wage gap between skilled and unskilled labor is also a positive effect and has a long-term equilibrium relationship.However,depending on the region,the significant level of influence is not the same.The empirical analysis of the above three levels has carried out robustness tests and the results have proved the robustness of the conclusions.Therefore,the conclusion of this paper is that from the perspective of export technology complexity,export trade through technology spillovers and price effects has led to an increase in the complexity of export technology,thereby expanding the wage gap between skilled and unskilled labor.The empirical results from the three levels of enterprise,industry,and region are consistent,examining the effect of export technical complexity on the wage gap between skilled and unskilled labor.The empirical test results support the theoretical viewpoint of the general equilibrium model.The research in this paper provides a new perspective for analyzing the impact of export trade on labor wages,and can be further extended to analyze the impact mechanism of labor markets in other developing countries.It also put forward corresponding development countermeasures and suggestions for the government to formulate trade policies and industrial policies,talent introduction and distribution system reforms and other aspects.The empirical research results at the three levels of enterprise,industry and region are consistent,and the influence of export technology complexity on the wage gap between skilled and unskilled labor is examined.The results of the test support the theoretical view of the general equilibrium model and provide a new perspective for the study of the relationship between trade and wage gap.The research in this paper provides a new perspective for analyzing the impact of export trade on labor wages,and can be further extended to analyze the impact mechanism of labor marketsin other developing countries.It also put forward corresponding development countermeasures and suggestions for the government to formulate policies for trade,industry,talent introduction and distribution system reforms.The innovation points of this paper are summarized as follows:Firstly,China's export trade is undergoing a structural transformation from the pursuit of quantity to the pursuit of quality and technological content.Technological progress is one of the most critical influencing factors during this process.This paper has constructed a relatively complete empirical system,which is to study the mechanism of the export technology complexity and the wage gap between skilled and unskilled laborers at the three levels of the enterprise,industry and region.The results show that the export technical complexity has a significant positive effect on the wage gap between skilled and unskilled labor.Secondly,Most of existing research focuses on the complexity of export technology itself,but there are few studies to analyze the wage gap between skilled and unskilled labor based on the complexity of export technology.This paper analyzes the impact of trade on the skill wage gap and its impact mechanism from the perspective of the complexity of export technology,and provides new explanation basis.It also provides a new perspective for the study of the relationship between trade and income inequality,and fills the research framework of the labor wage gap.Thirdly,in the process of China's transition from a trading power to a strong trade country,along with the rapid development of exports and the fact that technology spillovers have intensified.Based on the results of this research,targeted proposal of how to reduce the negative impact of trade on the expansion of the labor wage gap is given in the paper,which has a certain reference value to make corresponding policy.