最低工资标准影响劳动力空间配置吗？——基于地方政府竞争视角的分析

《财经研究》 2022年48卷第10期 页码：108 - 122  online：2022年10月3日

最低工资标准影响劳动力空间配置吗？——基于地方政府竞争视角的分析

Does the Minimum Wage Standard Affect the Spatial Allocation of Labor Force? A Perspective of Local Government Competition

作者（中）：陈勇吏1 , 李经2 , 魏下海3

作者（英）：Chen Yongli1, Li Jing2, Wei Xiahai3

作者单位：1. 上海交通大学 安泰经济与管理学院，上海 200030; 2. 上海财经大学 公共经济与管理学院，上海 200433; 3. 华侨大学 经济发展与改革研究院，福建 厦门 361021

摘要：大多对最低工资的关注都集中在劳动力权益保护以及地区劳动力吸引力方面，忽略了地区间最低工资竞争对地区间劳动力流动和劳动力资源配置的影响。文章基于各地最低工资标准和流动人口动态监测数据，测算了地区间人口流动矩阵，发现地方政府竞争性上调最低工资的行为引导了劳动力的空间流动。城市间的最低工资标准差距越大，从低标准区域向高标准区域的人口流入就会越多；其中流入地、流出地的最低工资上涨都表现出吸引劳动力的拉力作用，标准越高拉力越大。其原因主要在于，2010—2016年间最低工资上涨能显著提升85%收入分位以下流动人群的收入，成为绝大多数移民的工资增长路径，其中低学历、低收入、农业户籍表现得更加强烈。进一步探讨要素配置发现，最低工资通过“抢人大战”推动本地产业升级的同时，也会对周边地区产生负向溢出，进而产生了更大范围的劳动错配，而资本错配没有显著变化；其引致的劳动错配在最低工资竞争程度弱的地区极大弱化，在市场化程度高、国企占比低、政府赤字低、外商投资高、二产占比低的地区略有缓解。据此，文章认为地方政府应确保最低工资上调幅度符合当地经济条件、劳动要素禀赋和企业承受能力，消除地方保护主义带来的过度政府竞争，有助于缓解流入劳动力供给与流入地劳动力需求结构不匹配的问题。

关键词：低工资; 地方政府竞争; 劳动力空间流动; 劳动保护制度

Summary: Based on the local minimum wage standard and China Dynamic Monitoring Data of Floating Population, this paper calculates the interregional population mobility matrix and finds that the race-to-top competition of minimum wage leads to the spatial mobility of labor force. The greater the minimum wage gap between cities, the greater the inflow of people from the low-standard area to the high-standard area. A rise in the minimum wage in both places of origin and destination will exert a pulling effect on labor force, and the higher the standard, the greater the pulling effect. This effect diminishes as the distance between the two regions increases. These findings remain robust after replacing the explained variables with net population mobility or the demographic structure of the inflowing and outflowing regions, replacing the city pair cross-section data in 2017 with province pair panel data during 2011 and 2017, excluding the interference of sample representativeness, replacing the OLS model with a conditional logit model, and excluding the interference of confounding factors such as Hukou threshold, i.e. household registration threshold, and dialect culture. The reason mainly lies in that: The rise of minimum wage from 2010 to 2016 can significantly increase the income of the floating population below the 85 percentiles of the income distribution, which has guided wage growth for most of the floating population. This mechanism also explains why the pulling effect is significant for all groups while the impact of the minimum wage gap is stronger for people with low education, low income and rural Hukou. Further study on the allocation of labor factors shows that while the minimum wage promotes the upgrading of local industries through “competition for people”, it also exerts a negative spillover effect on neighboring areas, thus increases the degree of labor misallocation in a larger area, while not having a significant impact on capital misallocation. When there is a policy objective to raise the minimum wage in neighbouring areas, local governments have to follow suit as a response to preserve the local labor force, because an increase in the minimum wage will promote innovation and upgrading, while not doing so will only result in greater losses. This also determines the inertia of upward minimum wage competition among local governments in China. This type of labor mismatch is greatly weakened in areas where minimum wage competition is weak and mitigated in areas with a high degree of marketisation, a low share of state-owned enterprises, low government deficits, high foreign investment and a low share of second industries. Therefore, local governments should ensure that minimum wage increases are in line with local economic conditions, labor factor endowments and the affordability of enterprises, and eliminate excessive government competition brought about by local protectionism, in order to help to resolve the structural mismatch between inflowing labor supply and inflowing labor demand. This paper provides a new explanation for the positive and negative divergence of the employment effect of minimum wage from the perspective of population mobility, and also provides a new perspective on minimum wage competition for the spatial allocation of labor force, which has implications for the formulation of the optimal minimum wage standard in various places.

Key words: minimum wage; local government competition; labor force mobility; labor security

DOI：10.16538/j.cnki.jfe.20220615.301

收稿日期：2022-06-15

基金项目：国家自然科学基金面上项目（71873048）

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