The Direction Of Technical Change And An Empirical Analysis Of Its Effect On Industrial Structure Upgrading

Since1978reform and opening up, the economy of our country has made remarkable progress. By2007China’s GDP has surpassed Germany, ranging the Third in the world and in2011it also surpassed Japan, the second largest in the world. Industry is the pillar industry of national economy, and its contribution to the GDP growth is enormous. However, at present the industry of our country is facing a series of serious problems, which mainly rely on high input, high consumption, high emission and low efficiency to support the extensive economic growth. Especially the human more and more focus on environment issues and resource issues, the extensive mode of growth must not get continuous development. So the optimization of industrial structure, promoting the upgrading of economy transformation and realizing the sustainable development of economy is very necessary.On the one hand, in the communist party of the fifth plenary session of the sixteenth, it is suggest that" independent innovation" should be as the pillar point of the adjustment of industrial structure and the transformation of mode of economic growth;On the other hand, in the government work report of2014,Premier keqiang li also referred to " paying attention to adjust the economic structure", and "adjustment of the industrial structure of our country by innovation driving";Thus through technology innovation to promote technology progress to realize the optimization and upgrading of industrial structure is the main thought of adjusting the industrial structure in our country. In recent years scholars at home and abroad found that technological progress is not Hicks neutral technical progress, but a state of bias, and is mostly geared towards the technological progress of capital. Due to technical progress is biased and industry containing both capital-intensive industries and labor-intensive industries, whether there is any difference in technical progress affecting capital-intensive industries and labor-intensive industries? If there is any difference, for the industry the choice of technology may affect the factors of input flowing between different industries, which may impact on industrial structure upgrade. So from the perspective of bias of technological progress to research the effect of industrial structure upgrade is very meaningful. In this article we first estimate the element elasticity of substitution of33industries in our country between1993and2012using the standardized supply side system method, and then estimate the index of direction of technical change of33industries in industry. On this basis, according to the two different aspects that per capita capital is of high and low in different industries and that technological progress is towards different directions the33industries are divided into four groups, that is capital-intensive and capital preference of technological progress industry, labor-intensive and capital preference of technological progress industry, capital-intensive and labor preference of technological progress industry, labor-intensive and labor preference of technological progress industry. At last, we analysis the characteristics of industry technology progress of the four groups to influence on the effect of upgrading industrial structure derived by technology innovation using panel data model. The conclusions are as follows:First, among33industries the elasticity of substitution of most industries is larger than0but less than1, that is to say the relationship of labor and capital is complementary in these industries. As for the rest of the few industries, The elasticity of substitution of them is larger than1, that is to say the relationship of labor and capital is irreplaceable in these industries.Second, on the time dimension, at first the index of technical progress is negative, that is to say the technological progress is towards labor; Then the index of technical progress is steady and positive, that is the technological progress is towards capital; And finally the index of technical progress is the trend of fluctuations, but overall is still biased towards capital. On the industry dimension, the index of technical progress of only8industries is negative, that is the technological progress is towards labor; the rest25industries is positive, the industry overall biased towards the capital.Third, for the capital-intensive and capital preference of technological progress industries, increasing capital share of input, output share is reduced instead. This suggests that there are problems of excessive investment and excess production capacity in industries, especially in the capital-intensive and capital preference of technological progress industries. Four, in the capital-intensive and capital preference of technological progress industries, the coefficient for the cross terms of the index of technological progress and R&D share is negative. This means that due to the bias of technical progress, technological progress could suppress the increase of output share to some extent in the capital-intensive and capital preference of technological progress industries. In other words, in these industries there may exist the problem of unmatched technology selection with resources endowment.Summarizing the conclusions, at present the technical progress of industry in our country is indeed the state of bias and the directions and the degree of bias are also different in different industries and in different years, but the technology progress overall is biased towards the capital. Especially we find more problems in the capital-intensive and capital preference of technological progress industries. On the one hand, there exists the problems of overinvestment and excess capacity; on the other hand technology selection and resource endowment does not match. So in order to realize the industrial structure effective transformation and upgrading, to achieve sustained economic growth, the government and enterprises should strive to resolve these two problems.