A Study On The Impact And Mechanism Of Digital Economy On Labor Income Share

Since entering the 21 century,digital technology has developed rapidly,has been widely used in production,distribution and consumption and other fields,and has increasingly become an important driving force of economic growth and social transformation.The concept of digital economy has attracted much attention.Throughout the previous changes of the world economic development,each industrial technological revolution has reshaped the traditional economic growth model and social distribution pattern.The industrial technological revolution led by digital technology is profoundly changing the way of social production,life style and resource allocation.On the one hand,the industrial technological revolution improves the overall social welfare by adopting new technologies to improve the productivity of the whole society;on the other hand,the adoption of new technologies often forms a substitution effect on traditional industrial technologies,which leads to the loss of social welfare borne by some traditional industrial practitioners,which reflects that the industrial technological revolution has formed a thrust on the redistribution of social welfare.Although the existing research has paid attention to the impact of digital economy on income growth,the research on the impact of digital economy on factor income distribution is not sufficient,and the mechanism of digital economy development affecting income distribution also needs to be further discussed.Considering that digital economy has become an important driving factor for the economic development of countries all over the world,an in-depth study of the impact of digital economy on labor income share is helpful to reveal the conditions for the formation of fair income pattern and the macro and micro mechanisms,and to clarify the deep reasons why digital economy affects labor income share.This dissertation makes a systematic theoretical analysis and empirical research on how the digital economy affects the share of labor income.On the basis of combing and summarizing the related theories and literatures of digital economy and labor income share,this dissertation constructs a mathematical model and deduces the theoretical mechanism that digital economy affects labor income share.Three theoretical transmission mechanisms of informatization,market competition and industrial structure are put forward.On the basis of comparing the different measurement methods of the development level of digital economy,this dissertation constructs the development index of digital economy in line with the level of prefecture-level administrative regions in China,and empirically tests the actual impact of digital economy on labor income share and its transmission mechanism.In addition,this dissertation discusses the heterogeneous influence of digital economy on the labor income share of different ownership types,different scales and different factor-intensive enterprises,and reveals the causes of the heterogeneity.The study found that:(1)There are great differences in the development level of digital economy at the prefecture-level administrative level in China.The overall development level of China’s digital economy shows a rapid upward trend,and the development level of the national digital economy in 2017 has increased by 181% compared with 2004.Especially since2011,the development of digital economy in China has been accelerated.However,there are still significant differences between regions.Compared with other regions,the eastern region started faster and its growth rate is far ahead of other regions.In addition to the obvious leading advantage in the eastern region,there is a convergence trend among the central region,the western region and the northeast region.(2)Although digital technology can lead to capital replacing labor elements in micro enterprises,its externalities promote the level of market competition,and the digital economy as a whole helps to increase the share of labor income.The empirical results show that the higher the development index of digital economy,the higher the share of labor income of industrial enterprises.After considering a series of endogenous and robust tests,such as omission variables,selection of instrumental variables,replacement of main explanatory variables and explained variables,replacement of different databases,and consideration of labor income share at the macro level,the impact of digital economy on labor income share is still valid.In addition,the impact of digital economy on labor income share has nonlinear characteristics.With the deepening of the development of digital economy,the promotion effect of digital economy on labor income share will gradually decrease and inhibit the growth of labor income share.However,at this stage,the digital economy still plays a role in promoting the growth of labor income share.(3)Through the expansion of the theory,this dissertation constructs the generation mechanism of the impact of digital economy on labor income share.The development of digital economy mainly affects the labor income share of enterprises through three action mechanisms: informatization,market competition and industrial structure.The three explain the effect of the development of digital economy on the labor income share at different levels.First,the digital economy has significantly improved the degree of informatization of enterprises.The degree of informatization has a negative impact on the share of labor income.Informatization has a masking effect in the impact of digital economy on the share of labor income of enterprises.Second,the development of digital economy has significantly affected the level of market competition.Market competition is an important mechanism for the digital economy to affect the labor income share of enterprises.Whether it is the degree of market competition reflected by price addition or online sales,this effect is significant in Industrial Enterprises above Designated Size and small and medium-sized enterprises.Third,the development of digital economy has significantly affected the regional industrial structure,and the increase of the proportion of the tertiary industry can promote the share of macro labor income.The contribution decomposition of the development of digital economy to the mechanism of labor income share shows that at the micro enterprise level,market competition is the leading effect affecting labor income share,accounting for 42% of the total effect;The masking effect of informatization accounts for-16.8% of the total effect.This shows that the channel direction of the impact of digital economy on labor income share is not consistent,but the total effect promotes the growth of labor income share.(4)The impact of the development of digital economy on the share of labor income of enterprises has significant differences among different types of ownership,different scale enterprises and different factor intensive enterprises.First,the development of digital economy has a significant impact on the labor income share of non-state-owned enterprises,but the impact of state-owned enterprises is not significant.Second,the impact of the development of digital economy on the labor income share of small and medium-sized enterprises is higher than that of large enterprises,which may be because large enterprises have stronger monopoly ability.Third,the positive impact of the development of digital economy on the labor income share of labor-intensive enterprises is higher than that on capital intensive enterprises.This study contains the following policy implications: first,to promote the development of digital economy,speed up the construction of digital infrastructure,and bridge the regional digital divide.Second,improve the competition pattern of digital platform and improve the competition level of factor market and product market.Third,promote the deep integration of the digital economy and the industrial structure,promote the upgrading of the industrial structure,and optimize the distribution pattern of factor income.