| Since the reform and opening-up,China’s employment has made historic achievements,and the continuous expansion of employment scale has been successfully realized.However,with the deepening of macroeconomic structural transformation and industrial upgrading process,the problem of unbalanced and inadequate development of labor skill structure in China is becoming more and more prominent.In the context of“new normal”,appropriate policy tools are urgently needed to achieve fuller employment with higher quality.In recent years,with the fading of “demographic dividend” and the rising labor costs,coupled with the promotion of national strategies such as “China’s Western Development Program” and “Rise of Central China”,industries from the eastern coastal regions have gradually started to transfer to the central and western inland regions,which drives the transformation and upgrading of industrial sectors.The industrial structure determines skill structure since industry is the carrier of employment.Regional industry transfer should have obvious impacts on labor skill structure while promoting the optimization and upgrading of industrial structure.Therefore,conducting research on the topic of China’s regional industry transfer and labor skill structure has great theoretical significance and practical value.At present,studies on the labor skill structure of both domestic and overseas are mainly focusing on the stock aspect,that is,the skill structure of employment.Among which,foreign scholars mainly explain the phenomena of employment upgrading and employment polarization in the labor market of developed countries from perspectives such as skill-biased technical progress,trade liberalization,offshore outsourcing etc.While domestic scholars mainly follow above mentioned perspectives plus corresponding theories,and reveal why the high-skilled employment continuously raising over past decades in combination with China’s empirical data.It is a remarkable fact that China promotes the extension of industrial chain to central and western regions through inter-regional industry transfer to coordinate regional economic development and optimize economic structures,after eastern regions undertake international industry transfer from developed countries and take participation in the international division of labor with cost advantages of traditional factors.As an important way to adjust the industrial structure,for one thing regional industry transfer promotes the optimization and upgrading of industrial structure in transfer-out region by alleviating the contradiction between resource and environment,for another it realizes the leapfrog development of regional economy and the upgrading of industrial structure in transfer-in region by accelerating industrialization and urbanization.From this perspective,the formation and development of skill structure of China’s labor market is likely to well depend on the progress of regional industry transfer.From the perspective of regional industry transfer,by adapting relevant theories in domestic and overseas,with fully consideration for the characteristics of China’s labor market and regional economic development,this dissertation constructs theoretical models,explains mechanisms that regional industry transfer between developed and underdeveloped regions in a developing country has effects on the stock,increment and quality of labor skill structure(which is regarded as “three factors” of labor skill structure).Based on the analysis of China’s provincial-level dataset(except Tibet),this dissertation uses spatial econometric analysis technique to examine the impacts of regional industry transfer on the “three factors” of China’s labor skill structure from three levels: skilled employment,skill mobility and human capital accumulation,in hope of providing theoretical basis and policy suggestions for the use of regional industry transfer,to achieve the ultimate goal of “adjusting the stock,optimizing the increment and improving the quality” of labor skill structure.The empirical results indicate:(1)From the perspective of the response to skill employment,regional industry transfer has significant threshold effect and spatial spillover effect on the stock change of labor skill structure.In general,regional industry transfer has positive effects on employment of high-,medium-and low-skilled workers,but there are differences in the ways of influencing labor employment with different skill levels: the increase of employment for high-skilled workers mainly comes from the rising demand for skills induced by regional industry transfer,while the increase of medium-and low-skilled employment is mainly due to economic growth or industrialization progress caused by regional industry transfer.From the perspective of threshold effect,regional industry transfer doesn’t have significant threshold effect on employment for high-skilled workers,while medium-and low-skilled employment is limited by threshold effect caused by industrial co-agglomeration.After dividing China into different sub regions,the threshold effect of regional industry transfer on the stock of labor skill structure comes out obvious heterogeneity,especially for transfer-in region.In terms of spatial effect,employment for high-skilled workers shows a significant negative spatial spillover effect,while regional industry transfer has a positive spillover effect on employment for low-skilled workers in neighboring regions.After regional segmentation,local employment of high-,medium-and low-skilled workers in both transfer-out and transfer-in regions started to show a steady negative spatial spillover effect.There exists regional heterogeneity for spatial spillover effect of regional industry transfer on various levels of skilled employment in neighboring regions.In addition,as the main object affected by regional industry transfer,employment for medium-skilled workers is structurally more sensitive to the degree of industrial co-agglomeration.Meanwhile,regional industry transfer has a significantly positive spillover effect on medium-skilled employment.(2)From the perspective of the response to skill mobility,the incremental changes of labor skill structure show characteristics of significant path dependence in the time dimension and significant negative spatial spillover effects in the spatial dimension.Nationally,regional industry transfer has significant positive effects on the outflow of local high-,medium-and low-skilled labor in certain region,while only has significant positive spatial spillover effects on the inflow of medium-skilled labor in surrounding areas.In cases of regional segmentation,the path dependence of incremental changes of labor skill structure shows strong robustness in all subdivisions,but the spatial spillover effect began to show obvious regional heterogeneity.Flows of high-,medium-and low-skilled labors in the transfer-out regions all have negative spatial spillover effects,while labor flows of above three types of skill in the transfer-in regions all represent positive spatial spillover effects.Furthermore,there is regional disparity in spatial effects regarding to skill structure in the subdivisions where industries are transferred in.At the same time,incremental impacts of regional industry transfer on labor skill structure show great regional heterogeneity: Specifically,incremental impacts of regional industry transfer on labor skill structure in transfer-out regions are basically consistent with the overall result.On average,incremental impacts of regional industry transfer on labor skill structure in transfer-in regions are not obvious.However,as for central regions,regional industry transfer promotes the local inflow of high-skilled labor and the local outflow of low-skilled labor,while it has a negative spatial spillover effect on the inflow of high-skilled labor and the outflow of low-skilled labor in neighboring regions.As for western regions,regional industry transfer merely promotes the local inflow of low-skilled labor,and has a positive spatial spillover effect on the inflow of low-skilled labor in neighboring regions.(3)From the perspective of the response to human capital accumulation,the quality changes of labor skill structure show significant path dependence characteristics in the time dimension and significantly positive spatial spillover effects in the spatial dimension.Additionally,the quality of labor skill structure in peripheral areas last period has a significantly negative spatial spillover effect on that of local areas at the current period in the process.Regional industry transfer that promotes effectively the local accumulation of human capital in the long term has positive effects on improving the quality of labor skill structure,while it has a negative indirect effect on the human capital accumulation of peripheral areas,which means regional industry transfer has a significantly negative spatial spillover effect on the quality of labor skill structure in peripheral areas.After dividing China into different sub regions,the path dependence of quality changes and two kinds of spatial spillover effects show strong robustness in all subdivisions,but the impacts of regional industry transfer on human capital accumulation in local areas and in peripheral areas show obvious regional heterogeneity.In addition,regional industry transfer can promote regional accumulation of human capital from demand and supply sides through accelerating industrial agglomeration,optimizing industrial structure and improving labor quality,and play a positive role in improving the quality of labor skill structure since those mediation effects focus on influencing the local and short-term human capital accumulation.Compared with previous research,the innovation of this dissertation is mainly reflected in three aspects: First,from the perspective of regional industry transfer,this dissertation systematically explores the impacts that it has on the stock,the increment and the quality of labor skill structure from skill employment aspect,skill mobility aspect and human capital accumulation aspect.Second,this dissertation constructs theoretical models and mechanisms that regional industry transfer affects the stock,the increment and the quality of labor skill structure based on the skill premium model,the new economic geography model and the human capital theory.Third,different from existing researches on labor skill structure that look at the interrelationships between regions based on an isolated dimension,this dissertation theoretically reveals the causes of spatial correlation between regions based on the perspective of spatial flow of factors,and empirically test the corresponding spatial spillover effect using spatial econometric analysis technique. |
