最低工资与企业创新

本文考察了最低工资对企业创新的影响。研究发现,最低工资显著促进了企业创新,通过相邻样本分析、双重差分策略以及其他一系列稳健性检验发现,结论基本稳健。最低工资改善了企业的物质资本,降低了低技能工人就业,提高了高技能工人就业,促进了企业人力资本优化,从而为企业创新提供了硬件和软件条件。企业实现创新的方式有自创和引进技术两种,最低工资提高了企业的创新效率。进一步研究发现,最低工资改善了企业的要素结构和全要素生产率。异质性分析发现,最低工资对劳动密集型企业、平均工资较低的企业、行业竞争激烈的企业以及高市场化地区企业的创新影响更加明显。本文的研究结果表明,最低工资政策具有促进企业创新升级的作用,这与党的十九届五中全会提出的"坚持创新驱动发展"的战略目标相一致。

Minimum Wage and Corporate Innovation

Research on the impact of labor market factors on the real economy is currently increasing in the fields of economics and corporate finance, and innovation is currently the driving force of China's economic development. The effect on innovation of the minimum wage, an important labor policy, is not adequately examined in the literature, and thus investigating the relationship between the minimum wage and enterprise innovation has both practical and theoretical significance. The minimum wage may discourage innovation, as rising labor costs can lead to enterprises' shutting down or exiting the local market. The cost pressure from an increase in the minimum wage may also result in fewer non-wage benefits, such as enterprise training investment, which can reduce or weaken employees' sense of belonging to an enterprise and thus reduce their level of innovation. However, the minimum wage can also promote innovation, as the increasing labor costs can lead to a decline in profits, which can encourage enterprises to adopt advanced technologies to replace expensive labor. This can be viewed as labor-induced technological progress. An increase in the minimum wage can also force out low-skilled workers and improve the overall human capital of a business, thus promoting innovation. Using patent data and data on listed companies from 2006 to 2014, we examine the impact of municipal minimum wages on innovation, and find a positive effect. Through adjacent sample analysis, a double difference strategy, and a series of other robustness tests, we find that the significant positive relationship between minimum wage and innovation is generally stable. The minimum wage improves the material capital of enterprises, reduces the number of low-skilled workers, increases the number of high-skilled workers, and helps to optimize human capital, thus providing both the hardware and software conditions for innovation. Enterprises can achieve innovation through self-innovation and technology introduction. The minimum wage also improves the innovation efficiency of enterprises. Further analyses indicate that the minimum wage improves an enterprise's factor structure and total factor productivity. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the minimum wage has a more obvious influence on the innovation of more labor-intensive enterprises, those with lower average wages, those with higher levels of industry competition, and those in high-(vs. low-) marketization regions. Our study has theoretical value as we analyze the influence of institutional factors (minimum wage) on micro-enterprise innovation, rather than labor factors at the company level, which is the main focus of other studies of labor cost and innovation. The capital-skill complementary theory has rarely been applied in studies of the effects of minimum wage, but we systematically examine its varying effects on the demand for high-skilled and low-skilled labor, thus overcoming the drawbacks of a homogenous analysis of labor demand. By applying this theory we find that the minimum wage leads to low-skilled workers' losing their jobs, indicating that it can harm the interests of such workers and is therefore not an act of labor protection in a general sense. This study also provides new policy implications. Our finding that the minimum wage leads to a decline in the employment of low-skilled labor indicates that although such policies can promote enterprise innovation and development, at least some employees will suffer. Laid off workers should therefore be actively re-employed in all regions implementing minimum wage policies. We also identify enterprises with self-created technology and those with imported technology in the market. These two types of innovation should be recognized in innovation-driven development strategies. Policymakers should provide distinct innovation incentives to the two groups of companies, giving priority to supporting enterprises that create their own technologies while also considering those that use external technologies.