| After joining the World Trade Organization(WTO)in 2001,China took the initiative to implement the commitments made during its accession to the WTO,continuously reducing tariff rates,adjusting tariff categories and various tax preferential policies.After completing the commitment to reduce tariffs,China still independently reduced tariff levels through signing free trade agreements with other countries and establishing special customs supervision zones.The decline of tariff rate has impacted the domestic market of imported products,which has intensified the market competition.Some enterprises seize the opportunity to expand reproduction,and some enterprises transfer or withdraw from the market directly,which will have a positive or negative impact on labor employment.The employment of workers has always been a key concern of society.Whether or not to handle the employment problem of workers in the environment of constantly adjusting tariff rates is related to the most basic livelihood security and stable social development.The content of this article will explore whether the reduction of tariffs promotes or suppresses the employment of workers,and what is the mechanism of its impact on employment.In addition,when exploring the impact mechanism of import tariff reduction on manufacturing labor employment,this article incorporates total factor productivity and enterprise production costs as intermediary variables to examine the impact of tariff reduction on manufacturing employment.This article mainly consists of four parts.The first part mainly clarifies the background and research significance of the topic,and sorts out domestic and foreign literature from multiple perspectives.The second part first analyzes the impact mechanism of tariff reduction on manufacturing employment.Theoretical analysis shows that tariff reduction can affect total factor productivity and production costs of enterprises,thereby affecting the employment level of the manufacturing industry.Descriptive analysis is conducted on the situation of tariff reduction and China’s employment status using charts and other data.The third part first selects the most favored nation tax rate(MFN)to calculate the tariff rates of 28 manufacturing sub sectors under the national economic classification.Using the manufacturing panel data from 2014 to 2021,the impact of tariff rates on manufacturing employment is studied through static panel regression,and the control variables such as GDP,wage level,and capital investment are added one by one to ensure the robustness of the regression results;Then,based on the differences in the technological level of the manufacturing industry,the manufacturing industry is divided into high,medium,and low tech industries for heterogeneity analysis;Finally,take total factor productivity and enterprise production cost as the intermediary variables of tariff affecting manufacturing employment,and conduct regression analysis of their mesomeric effect through stepwise regression coefficient method and Sobel test respectively.The fourth part summarizes the research conclusions of this article based on the empirical results and proposes reasonable policy recommendations.The main conclusions of this article are as follows:(1)The decrease in tariffs has promoted an increase in manufacturing employment;(2)The number of employment in the manufacturing industry is also influenced by industry output levels,wage levels,capital investment,and research and development investment;(3)Heterogeneity analysis found that the decrease in tariffs significantly promoted the increase in labor employment in medium and high-tech industries,and had a weak inhibitory effect on the employment of low tech industries;(4)The mesomeric effect regression results show that total factor productivity and enterprise production costs play a part of the mesomeric effect in the process of the impact of tariff reduction on manufacturing employment. |
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