The Study Of The Impact Of Rising Labor Costs On The Exports Of Manufacturing Enterprises

Since the reform and opening up,China has rapidly participated in the international trade division system by virtue of its low labor cost advantage.Foreign trade has developed rapidly and has become an important driving force for economic growth.Among them,the manufacturing industry has played an important role as the main force of exports.However,with the changes in the age structure of the population and the relationship between supply and demand in the labor market,labor costs continue to rise,and changes in its prices have profoundly affected the production input choices of enterprises and the implementation of foreign export strategies.Therefore,whether from the perspective of improving the quality of China’s manufacturing exports or from the perspective of responding to changes in the age structure of the population,systematically and comprehensively assess the impact of rising labor costs on the exports of China’s manufacturing enterprises,and whether this impact will differ due to the type of corporate ownership,the industry and the region is a very critical issue,which has important theoretical value and practical significance at the moment.On the basis of reviewing the existing literature,this paper studies the impact of rising labor costs on the exports of manufacturing enterprises.Theoretically speaking,the "cost effect" believes that rising labor costs increase the production cost of enterprises,or cause the price of export products to rise,or force the enterprise to lay off employees and reduce the scale of production,which is not conducive to the export of enterprises.The "efficiency effect" believes that rising labor costs will have a positive impact on the production efficiency of enterprises through three ways of improving employees’ production enthusiasm,forcing enterprises to innovate and upgrade,and improving the overall quality of workers,which is conducive to the export of enterprises.At present,the research on the relationship between labor cost and enterprise export in the literature has not yet formed a consistent view,and most of the literature chooses macro-level data to conduct research,and the research on the export behavior of micro-enterprises is still insufficient.Based on this,this paper has made certain improvements in research methods and data selection,and carried out heterogeneity analysis for the type of enterprise ownership,industry and region,and enriched the existing research results.This paper selects data from Chinese industrial enterprises and uses OLS,Probit,Tobit,and Fixed-Effect models to study the impact of rising labor costs on the export decisions and export value of manufacturing enterprises.The empirical results show that rising labor costs will promote more manufacturing enterprises to choose exports,it will also increase the export value of manufacturing enterprises.This shows that for China’s manufacturing enterprises,the "efficiency effect" is stronger than the "cost effect",which is consistent with the research results of most documents.This paper also further studies the impact of rising labor costs on the export of manufacturing enterprises from the perspective of enterprise heterogeneity,which is specifically expressed as follows:(1)Rising labor costs increase the export value of state-owned,private,and foreign-funded enterprises,and this effect has the greatest impact on stateowned enterprises;(2)Rising labor costs increase the export value of labor-intensive,capital-intensive,and technology-intensive enterprises,and this effect has the greatest impact on labor-intensive enterprises;(3)Rising labor costs increase the export value of enterprises in the eastern,central and western regions,and this effect has the greatest impact on enterprises in the eastern region.In addition,this paper verifies the possible mechanism of "increasing labor cost→increasing enterprise total factor productivity→increasing enterprise exports" by calculating the total factor productivity of enterprises and regressing it with labor costs,which provides richer evidence for the main research conclusions of this paper.The research results of this paper provide richer empirical evidence for the theme of rising labor costs affecting the export of manufacturing enterprises,and provide new ideas for strengthening the international competitiveness of China’s manufacturing industry.Accordingly,this paper puts forward the following policy recommendations:(1)Pay attention to the improvement of the quality of workers and cultivate the advantages of human capital.Increase capital investment in vocational education,formulate reasonable teaching training methods and courses for undergraduate education,and cultivate more skilled talents that match the needs of enterprises;(2)Encourage enterprises to increase R&D investment and enhance independent innovation capabilities.Strengthen the training and absorption of hightech talents,form professional research teams or cooperate with universities and scientific research institutions to create a good innovation environment;(3)Promote the upgrading of the manufacturing industry structure and consolidate export competitiveness.As far as different industries are concerned,the input structure of production factors should be adjusted as soon as possible,and accelerate the transformation of the manufacturing industry structure to capital and technologyintensive.As far as different regions are concerned,the advantages of regional development should be fully coordinated and industrial institutions should be optimized.