摘要
为解释资本结构与劳动力结构的协同变迁,以及技能溢价不断上升的现象,本文首先提出了无形资本与技能劳动力互补这一修正的资本—技能互补假说,并通过估计中国城镇部门1995—2020年的总量生产函数对该假说进行检验;其次,基于估计结果,对技能溢价的变动进行了因素分解;最后,构建了包含无形资本的动态一般均衡模型,探讨无形资本深化的原因及其对经济的长期影响。研究发现:第一,技能劳动力与无形资本的替代弹性(1.275)要小于其与物质资本的替代弹性(1.908),证实了无形资本与技能劳动力具有相对互补性。第二,驱动技能溢价上升的动力中,61.98%来源于技能偏向型技术进步,33.76%来源于无形资本深化效应。第三,无形资本不断深化的原因,在于技能劳动力的数量与生产率不断增加。技能劳动力与无形资本的持续深化将引致技能偏向型结构转型,并使得无形资本深化效应对技能溢价的影响逐渐减弱。
With the rapid development of digital economy,intangible capital centered on knowledge,data,brands,and organizational management has gradually replaced tangible capital as a crucial driving force for high-quality development of China's economy.At the same time,the number of highly educated labor in China has rapidly increased,leading to a trend of co-agglomeration between skilled labor and intangible capital at the industry level,accompanied by a continuous increase in skill premium.This phenomenon attracts our attention and we then propose the following research questions:Why does intangible capital grow simultaneously with skilled labor?Will the growth of intangible capital affect income distribution?To answer these two questions,we first propose a modification to the capital-skill complementarity hypothesis by asserting the complementarity between intangible capital and skilled labor.We subsequently incorporate intangible capital into a nested two-level CES production function and utilize a supply-side system approach to estimate the production function of the urban sector in China from 1995 to 2020.The estimation results support the hypothesis proposed in this paper and exclude the classic competitive hypothesis of complementarity between tangible capital and skilled labor.Furthermore,based on the estimated production function,we decompose the economic growth and skill premium changes in China's urban sector.The decomposing results show that the skill-biased technological progress accounts for an average annual increase of 3.15%in skill premium,while the deepening effect of intangible capital accounts for an average annual increase of 1.74%.This implies that roughly one-third of the impetus for the rise in skill premium is attributable to the deepening effect of intangible capital.Finally,we develop a two-sector dynamic general equilibrium model that incorporates intangible capital.The model sheds light on the reasons behind the increase in the share of intangible capital:if the substitution elasticity between intermediate sectors is greater than 1,the growth of skilled labor can increase the proportion of intangible capital which has relative complementarity with it.Meanwhile,this paper presents a deduction regarding the long-term trend of economic growth and changes in the skill premium:the economic growth rate will converge to sectors with higher growth rates,while the complementarity effect between capital and labor will gradually diminish over time,and the change in skill premium will ultimately be determined only by the labor structure and the level of skill-biased technological progress.Compared with existing literature,this paper has following contributions.First,this paper innovatively introduces intangible capital into a nested two-level CES function and proposes the revised capital-skill complementarity hypothesis,which suggests that intangible capital and skilled labor have relative complementarity.This revision is a supplement of the classic capital-skill complementarity hypothesis,which is more consistent with the technological-economic paradigm and statistical standards in the digital economy era.Second,this paper simultaneously incorporates skill-biased technological progress and capital-skill complementarity effects into the production function,and decomposes the skill premium in China's urban sector.The findings help to clarify the driving force behind the changes in China's skill premium.Third,this paper provides a macro-level explanation for the coordinated transformation of labor and capital structure,enriching the intrinsic mechanism of economic structural transformation from the perspective of production factors.The results indicate that the economic structure will gradually transform into intangible capital and skill-intensive sectors in the long run,and this structural transformation may not cause Baumol's cost disease.Meanwhile,based on the dynamic analysis of skill premium,this paper offers a new explanation for the weakening effect of capital-complementarity in the existing literature.Fourth,this paper improves the measurement method of China's intangible capital stock,GDP and skill premium,and points out that a substantial portion of China's overall skill premium arises from the income gap caused by urban-rural segmentation.Therefore,this paper utilizes the urban sector as the research sample,which not only can identify key parameters more accurately,but also provide a more comprehensive understanding to the changes of China's skill premium in recent years.
作者
段巍
舒欣
吴福象
刘彤彤
DUAN Wei;SHU Xin;WU Fuxiang;LIU Tongtong(Yangtze River Delta Economics and Social Development Research Center,Nanjing University;School of Economics,Nanjing University;Business School,Nanjing University of Information Science&Technology)
出处
《经济研究》
CSSCI
北大核心
2023年第3期116-134,共19页
Economic Research Journal
基金
国家自然科学基金青年项目(71903086)
国家自然科学基金面上项目(72073061)的资助
国家社会科学基金重大项目(20&ZD123)。
关键词
无形资本
替代弹性
生产函数
资本—技能互补
技能溢价
Intangible Capital
Substitution Elasticity
Production Function
Capital-Skill Complementarity
Skill Premium
