| In recent years the price of labor is rising rapidly and irreversibly in China, so the manufacturing industry, especially the labor-intensive industry, is gradually losing its previous advantage. In this instance, transformation and upgrading, to take advantage of the productivity promotion to cope with the rising labor price is the only way for enterprises to achieve the net-income-effect.According to the efficiency wage theory, paying salary above the market clearing level will motivate the employees, reduce the turnover rate, attract high-quality employees, build loyalty and sense of identity, and hence promote the productivity. Then, whether firms can benefit from the efficiency wage effect caused by paying higher wage is one of our research contents.However, the precondition for efficiency wage effect is that the product of labor cannot be observed directly, that is to say, the contract should have implicity. For different posts, the degrees of implicity are different. Therefore, whether paying higher wages will cause productivity promotion and the levels of productivity promotion will both be different; and then, for different firms, the quantity and structure of all kinds of posts are different. Thus, post heterogeneity of efficiency wage is supposed to extend to firm heterogeneity, which is the focus of this paper. Research ideas and methods are as follows:Firstly, we set up a basic model which is used to measure the impact of wage on firm profit margins and test the positive correlation of’wage→productivity’.Secondly, we make following improvements on the basic model:(1)based on the "self-executing" mechanism caused by the labor contract implicity, we form the theoretical principle for the research, and do the post clarification on the basis of contract implicity, in order to observe if degrees of efficiency wage effect vary between posts.(2)"paying higher wage" means the higher wage under the premise of industry category and post category comparable. We implement standard treatment to the absolute wages based on the minimum wages of the same post within the same industry. In order to meet the comparability between industries, we implement similar standard treatment to other variables.(3)we involve cross term of technical level and wage, in order to observe the incentive effect through the direct incentive path of "wageâ†â†’enthusiasm of employeesâ†â†’productivity" and the indirect technical path of "wageâ†â†’human capitalâ†â†’technical levelâ†â†’productivity".Finally, based on the extended model, we discuss the existence of the firm heterogeneity of efficiency wage effect and try to give an explanation of the generation of the firm heterogeneity of efficiency wage effect from two paths.This paper, by using the above-scale manufacturing enterprises data from’The Third National Economic Census’ in Zhejiang Province forms the research sample, and makes the following conclusions:1. The positive correlation of "wage-productivity" always exists. So paying higher wage can promote the productivity and expand the profit space.2. The heterogeneity of efficiency wage effect exists. Specific performance is as follows:the mechanism works better in posts with higher degree of labor contract implicity. Hence the wage increase of such posts has more significant effect on the productivity. Accordingly, firms with higher proportion of posts those have higher degree of labor contract implicity are easier to benefit from efficiency wage effect by paying higher wage.3. Wage rise can promote the productivity through the direct incentive path of "wageâ†â†’enthusiasm of employeesâ†â†’productivity" and the indirect technical path of "wageâ†â†’human capitalâ†â†’technical levelâ†â†’productivity". In the direct incentive path, the heterogeneity is the result of the heterogeneity of posts’ labor contract implicity and firms’ post distribution characteristics. In the indirect technical path, the dynamic matching of firms’ technical level and the rise of human capital caused by higher wage is the crucial factor for the work of incentive mechanism.To sum up, we recommend that, the policy exertion is to carry on the classified guidance for firms, and stress on the dynamic matching of material capital and human capital in the technical path. |
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