假日结构与劳动生产率——兼论假日政策的有效性问题

假日政策的经济有效性问题一直是国内外学者争论的焦点。传统观点认为假日政策的有效性与否取决于假日数量、经济发展阶段和休闲活动选择等内容条件,但这仍然无法为"黄金周"存废之争提供直接的经济学解释。该研究试图从假日结构的角度出发,解释假日政策对劳动生产率的影响机制。文章以1995-2015年的跨国面板数据为分析对象,对假日离散指数与劳动生产率的关系进行实证分析。结果表明,假日结构设置对劳动生产率存在非线性关系：随着假日集中度的提高,劳动生产率呈现先上升、后下降的"倒U型"曲线,最佳假日离散指数为0.98。对比来看,我国2015年假日离散指数为1.12,这表明现阶段我国假日结构设置较为集中,在一定程度上抑制了经济绩效提升。机制检验表明：随着人均受教育程度的提高,假日离散指数越大,其对个体劳动生产率的抑制作用越显著;随着经济结构的不断优化,较为分散的假日结构更有利于劳动生产率的提高。进一步地,文章还发现在不同的经济发展阶段,"学习效应"和"疲劳效应"对生产率的相对重要程度不同。研究的政策含义是,在落实带薪休假的基础上,应该推动假日结构向分散化、扁平化转变,在试点行业探索推行弹性工作制。

Holiday Structure and Labor Productivity: Based on the Effectiveness of Holiday Policy

The economic effectiveness of holiday policy has always been the focus of controversy among scholars. Traditionally, the validity of holiday policy depends on the number of holidays, the stage of economic development and the choice of leisure activities. However, it is still unable to provide a direct economic explanation for the controversy over the preservation or abolition of the Golden Week. From the perspective of holiday structure, this study attempts to explain the impact mechanism of holiday policy on labor productivity. This paper takes the cross-border panel data from 1995 to 2015 as the object of analysis, and makes an empirical analysis on the relationship between holiday discrete index and labor productivity. The results show that there is a non-linear relationship between holiday structure and labor productivity. With the increase of holiday concentration, labor productivity presents an inverted U-shaped curve, which increases first and then decreases. The optimum holiday discrete index is 0.98. By contrast, China's holiday discrete index in 2015 is 1.12, which shows that the holiday structure in China is relatively centralized at this stage and it will inhibit the improvement of economic performance. The mechanism test shows that with the improvement of per capita education, the greater the holiday discrete index, the more significant the inhibition effect on individual labor productivity; with the continuous optimization of economic structure, the more decentralized holiday structure is more conducive to the improvement of labor productivity. Furthermore, it is found that the relative importance of "learning effect" and "fatigue effect" to productivity varies in different stages of economic development. The policy implication of this study is that on the basis of implementing paid vacation, we should promote the change of holiday structure to decentralization and flattening, and explore the implementation of flexible working system in pilot industries.