| Under the background of the grand strategy of innovation-driven development,China’s economy has achieved significant growth,and the income of residents has increased significantly,but the current pattern of income distribution is still not optimistic.Most of the research in China is carried out from the perspective of technological change,and the relationship between technology bias and China’s labor income share,and direct examination of innovation and income inequality is relatively lacking.Therefore,studying the impact of innovation on income distribution and exploring the direction of technological innovation on income inequality have important policy implications for how to reduce income inequality.At the same time,the dilemma faced by traditional economic development needs to be solved by innovative economic models in the new era.With the great opportunity of the vigorous development of artificial intelligence,big data,cloud computing and other technologies in recent years,a new economic model-digital economy has come into being,and has become a research hotspot for scholars at home and abroad.Whether the digital economy,characterized by sharing,convenience,low cost and low threshold,can drive the technological innovation of micro-enterprises and even the quality of macroeconomic development is a practical issue worth exploring.Based on this research background,this paper takes the A-share manufacturing listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2013 to 2020 as a research sample,empirically tests the impact of enterprise innovation on the wage income gap,and on this basis,combined with the current development hotspot of the times-digital economy,studies the effect of China’s digital development on the wage income gap caused by enterprise innovation.To avoid bias caused by endogenous problems,instrumental variable regression is performed;in order to improve the robustness of the research conclusions,the robustness test was carried out by replacing the innovation output variables,changing the late-term variables,and deleting the samples of municipalities directly under the Central Government.The regression results are the same as the baseline regression results.At the same time,in order to improve the depth of the research,this paper also analyzes the heterogeneity of the property rights of enterprises and the regions to which they belong.In addition,in order to further study the impact of China’s digital development on the wage income gap caused by enterprise innovation,this paper analyzes the mechanism,looks for the research angle of enterprise innovation to narrow the wage income gap,and provides new ideas and evidence for future researchers.The empirical findings show that:Firstly,the innovative activities of the enterprise significantly improve the salary level of the internal management and employees of the enterprise,and have a greater role in promoting the remuneration level of the management,thereby widening the salary gap within the enterprise.Second,there is a two-way causal relationship between the salary level and the innovation of the enterprise,and this two-way causal relationship exists more between the strategic innovation activities of the enterprise and the salary level of employees.This shows that the incentive effect of the salary gap within the enterprise on the innovation of the enterprise stays more at the level of strategic innovation,and the impact on substantive innovation is not significant,and this low-quality innovation activity is more completed by low-skilled labor.This result supports the tournament theory to some extent.Third,the effect of enterprise innovation in widening the wage income gap within enterprises is reflected in both state-owned enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises.In contrast,the role of enterprise innovation in promoting salary levels is more obvious in private enterprises;the widening effect of enterprise innovation on the pay gap is more obvious in local state-owned enterprises.Four,the effect of enterprise innovation in widening the salary gap within enterprises is reflected in enterprises in the eastern region and the central and western regions.Five,the regression results of the moderating effect model show that the digital economy has further widened the pay gap caused by enterprise innovation.And the regression results show that under the regulatory role of the digital economy,the salary gap caused by the substantive innovation activities and strategic innovation activities of enterprises will be further widened;under the regulatory role of enterprise digital transformation,the salary gap caused by substantive innovation of enterprises has not shown a trend of further expansion,while the salary gap caused by strategic innovation of enterprises has been further widened.Six,the adjustment effect of the salary gap caused by the further widening of enterprise innovation caused by the digital economy is only reflected in local state-owned enterprises,and the impact is not obvious in central enterprises and private enterprises.Seven,the effect of the salary gap caused by the innovation of enterprises in the digital economy is more obvious in enterprises in the eastern region.This side verifies the current situation that there is a big gap between the development of the digital economy in the eastern region of China and the central and western regions.Eight,the digital economy will promote enterprise innovation by alleviating the financing constraints faced by enterprises,thereby further widening the wage income gap within enterprises;will further exacerbate the status quo of revenue inequality by raising market rents;will have the effect of narrowing the income gap by promoting "creative destruction".The innovations in this article are:First,this paper expands the response model of innovation and income inequality,focusing on the impact of China’s digital development on the wage gap caused by enterprise innovation.China is experiencing a broad and profound digital transformation,studying whether the current development of the digital economy has had an impact on the level of the internal salary gap of enterprises,and whether it is necessary to carry out the next step of policy improvement,which has practical guiding significance for optimizing the current income distribution pattern in China.Second,this paper conducts an empirical study on whether the digital economy can stimulate "creative destruction",using the number of newly registered enterprises to measure the entry of new producers,and looking for research angles for corporate innovation to reduce income inequality.The empirical findings of this paper have important policy implications for how to reduce income inequality. |
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