Study On The Impact Mechanism Of Migrant Workers’ Labor Input On Total Factor Productivity In The Construction Industry

The increase in total factor productivity(TFP)is a core pathway to the high-quality development of the construction industry,which urgently needs theoretical introduction and countermeasure support.Meanwhile,the labor input of migrant workers also plays an important role in promoting the sustained development of the industry.Crucially,this importance will not be fundamentally shaken at present and for a long period of time in the future.Hence,the impact of migrant workers’labor input should be taken into account in improving TFP of the construction industry.However,the existing literature generally ignores this impact,which is likely to obscure some effective pathways to improve TFP.Recently.although empirical studies have confirmed the existence of this impact,they could not further reveal the mechanism of impact formation.Naturally,these studies have failed to provide the much-needed pathway guidance for management practice to improve TFP.Under this condition,it will have important theoretical and practical significance to explore the impact mechanism of migrant workers’labor input on TFP.Against this background,this thesis tries to conduct a series of theoretical analysis,empirical analysis and application analysis around the impact of migrant workers’labor input on TFP in the construction industry,to explore and reveal the formation mechanism of this impact,and contribute some new knowledge and countermeasures for the growth of TFP,so as to promote the high-quality development of the industry.The main research work and research results are summarized as follows:(1)Theoretical study on the impact mechanism of migrant workers’labor input on TFP in construction.A systematic literature review shows that the lack of directly related literature determined that the theoretical analysis of impact mechanism could not be based on literature induction and integration.Further combined with the actual research,it is determined that the analysis was mainly completed by the definition analysis of TFP and TFP measure analysis based on the economic growth accounting theory.Analysis results show that the labor input of migrant workers not only had direct impact on TFP,but also had indirect impact,and the sum of these two impact was the total impact.The analysis based on TFP definition indicates that the direct effect was negative.The mathematical model analysis of TFP measure indicates that indirect impact only played its role by three parallel mediator variables:allocation structure R_m/Y,labor allocation structure L_n/L_m and average labor capital of migrant workers K/L_m,and the impact’s indirect effect was the sum of mediator effects from the three variables.Based on the above-mentioned impact process,combined with the mathematical model derivation results,the internal impact mechanism was further revealed and discussed.On this basis,the corresponding research hypotheses were proposed to guide the following empirical research.(2)Empirical research on the impact mechanism of migrant workers’labor input on TFP in construction.Based on the above theoretical analysis results,an empirical research program was designed,and the actual data related to the industry from 2002 to 2020 were collected and used to test the revealed impact mechanism and research hypotheses.It is found that the empirical results were completely consistent with theoretical expectation.Meanwhile,these findings held steady in robustness test.Additonally,the results of both basic test and robustness test show that the impact of migrant workers’labor input on TFP was mainly indirect,and over 90%of the total impact was realized through three mediator pathways during the research period.Further comparative analysis of the mediator effects shows that about 50%of the indirect effect was positive mediator effect from R_m/Y,while the remaining 50%was negative mediator effect from L_n/L_m and K/L_m.Due to the very strong suppressing effect among indirect effects,the total impact and total indirect impact of migrant workers’labor input on TFP were not significant in the study period.(3)The applied study of impact mechanism.On the basis of theoretical analysis and empirical research,four new pathways to improve TFP in the construction industry were identified.Further,combined with current development of the industry and some actual situations of migrant workers,a series of pathway suggestions were refined and proposed to improve TFP.During the above-mentioned exploration of impact mechanism,this work presents three innovations.The first is to find out the specific impact process of migrant workers’s labor input on TFP as a whole;the second is to reveal and validate the internal mediator mechanism of the impact;the third is to identify four new ways to improve TFP.Since this research is mainly based on the theory of economic growth accounting,the explored impact mechanism not only further expands and deepens the economic growth accounting theory in theory,but also provides some new empirical evidence for its establishment.In practice,it provides some new pathways and countermeasures for the improvement of TFP in the construction industry.