Minimum Wage、Capital Deepening And The Quality Of Export Products

As China’s demographic structure changes and the demographic dividend gradually disappears,which brings a huge impact to China’s manufacturing enterprises which mainly export labor-intensive products.It has become an urgent problem to realize the transformation of China’s export trade from quantity to quality.In addition,the quality of export products is an important indicator to measure a country’s international competitiveness.Improving the quality and efficiency of China’s export enterprises is also the key to maintain the sustainable development of the national economy.Minimum wage is a long-term policy implemented in our country,which aims to provide basic living guarantee for workers,but it also brings pressure on enterprises to increase costs.Under the condition of relative price changes of factors,whether enterprises will use more capital to replace labor,thus affecting the quality of export products.Therefore,this paper empirically analyzes the policy effect of minimum wage and the mechanism of capital deepening between them from the perspective of manufacturing enterprises’ export product quality.Through reading and summing up the relevant literature,this paper sorts out the mechanism of capital deepening,this paper collects the data from China Industrial Enterprise Database,China Customs Database,China City Statistical Yearbook and the websites of various prefecture-level cities,and obtains the panel data of China’s manufacturing enterprises from 2004 to 2013.At the beginning,the export product index is calculated by the backward deduction method afterwards,and its development trend is analyzed.Then,we use the stepwise regression method to test whether there is an intermediate effect between the minimum wage and the quality of export products by taking capital deepening as an intennediate variable.At last,we make a summary for the main conclusions,and give some suggestions.The main research conclusions of this paper are as follows:(1)From 2004 to 2013,the quality of export products of manufacturing enterprises in China showed an upward trend as a whole,but there were some differences under different ownership types and different trade modes.(2)In general,the increase in the minimum wage will improve the quality of export products,and there is a certain lag in this effect.(3)The promotion effect of minimum wage on the quality of export products of enterprises is different in industry,leverage ratio,ownership and region,and the promotion effect on high-end manufacturing industry is lower than that of traditional manufacturing industry;The promotion effect on high leverage enterprises is the largest,followed by low leverage enterprises and medium leverage enterprises;It has a significant positive impact on foreign-funded enterprises,but not on state-owned enterprises and private enterprises.There is a significant positive effect on the Yangtze River Delta Economic Zone,a significant negative effect on the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Economic Zone,and no significant effect on the Pearl River Delta and other regions.(4)The increase in the minimum wage will promote the capital deepening of enterprises,which is manifested in the continuous increase of labor productivity and the decrease of capital productivity,and the capital deepening has significant partial mediating effect in the impact of the minimum wage on the quality of export products.Therefore,the government should speed up the improvement of the minimum wage system suitable for China’s national conditions,realize the linkage of diversified labor and social security measures,further reduce the difficulty of financing for private enterprises,accelerate the reform of state-owned enterprises,and implement targeted subsidies for low efficient enterprises.At the same time,enterprises themselves should attach importance to innovation,moderately expand to form economies of scale,reduce production costs,and realize product upgrading.