| Due to the automated technology such as artificial intelligence is the strategic technology,which leads a new round of technological revolution and industrial revolution.Central and local government introduce a series of policies to develop the automated technology,and the automated capital investment is increasing.From 2012 to 2019,the sale of industrial robots in China increased rapidly,which makes up about a third of global market share and China is the world’s largest industrial robots’ buyer and application market.Since the outbreak and spread of COVID-19 around the world at the end of 2019,artificial intelligence and other automated technologies have played an important role in epidemic prevention and control,disease diagnosis,resource allocation,information tracking,enterprise production and operation,and accelerated the investment of automated capital and the reform of automated technology.At the same time,the replacement of labor force by automated technology represented by artificial intelligence has also triggered concerns about employment.Many literatures show that the trend of "machine replacement" has become prominent,and the employment structure and income distribution have been impacted.Studies on the impact of technological progress on the labor market have a long history.As early as the first half of the 20 th century,many scholars believed that technological progress would lead to a decline in the demand for labor(Keynes,1930;Leontief,1955).However,previous results of industrialization showed that technological progress did cause a small range of short-term unemployment and structural adjustment of the labor market,but did not lead to a large range of long-term unemployment(Deng and Huang,2019).In fact,the role of technological progress is not isolated,but coupled with various factors of production,and biased technological progress can reflect this coupling relationship(Li and Zhu,2016).Therefore,with the increase of automated capital investment in manufacturing enterprises,special attention should be paid to whether there are new characteristics and its influencing factors in the bias of technological progress in manufacturing industry,and what are the motivations of enterprises to promote such technological progress? Given ensuring employment,improving the labor income level and reducing the income gap have been the focus of the government’s work,for the high quality of China’s economic development and social harmony and stability is of great significance,and it is necessary to examine the effect and mechanism about the bias of technology progress on total employment,wage levels and wage gap.We should know how does this technological advancement in manufacturing upstream or downstream corporates affect employment and wage on their downstream or upstream corporates.All these are in urgent need of theoretical and empirical research to provide sufficient evidence.In order to answer the above questions,the main research contents and conclusions of this paper are as follows:Firstly,this paper measures the bias of technological progress in China’s manufacturing corporates,and study the influencing factors.Based on the data of listed manufacturing enterprises from 2012 to 2019,the stochastic frontier model in the form of transcending logarithmic production function is used to calculate that the technological progress of manufacturing is biased towards automated capital.Using the theoretical model of Acemoglu(2002)for reference,it is deduced that the influencing factors of this technological progress bias are market size effect(ratio of automated to non-automated capital input)and price effect(ratio of automated to non-automated capital-intensive product price).Through theoretical model analysis and empirical test,it is found that when the ratio of automated capital to non-automated capital(market size effect)increases,the manufacturing technology progress will be biased towards automated capital.Since such technological progress helps to improve the productivity of manufacturing enterprises in the short term,and will expand the scale of production and increase profits in the long term,manufacturing enterprises will be committed to improving their level of automated capital-biased technological progress.Secondly,this paper studies the impact of capital-biased technological progress of manufacturing corporates on employment.Based on the research of Acemoglu and Restrepo(2018),this paper introduces task-based model theory to analyze the influence mechanism of automated capital-biased technological progress of manufacturing industry on employment,and finds that automated capital-biased technological progress replaces low-level work tasks and create new and complex tasks,which will cause changes in the scale of enterprise productivity and output,thus affecting employment.The benchmark regression results show that at present,the manufacturing automated capital-biased technological progress has a substitution effect on employment,which can be further divided into the destructive effect on low-skilled labor force and the creative effect on high-skilled labor force,and the destructive effect is greater than the creative effect.The test results of the mediation effect model indicate that the substitution effect of automated capital-biased technological progress of manufacturing on employment is mainly realized through two ways: the decrease of output scale and the increase of productivity.In this paper,we add the interaction terms of government subsidy intensity,industry market concentration and automated capitalbiased technological progress according to the benchmark regression model.We find that government subsidy will increase the employment destruction effect of automated capital-biased technological progress on low-skilled labor force,and weaken the creation effect on high-skilled labor force.The higher the market concentration of the industry in which the firm is located,the stronger the employment crowding out effect of the automated capital-biased technological progress on the low-skilled labor force.Based on the input-output table,this paper constructed upstream and downstream automated capital-biased technological progress index of manufacturing enterprise,the results show that upper(lower)manufacturing enterprise automated capital-biased technological progress will raise the level of automated technology in downstream(upstream)enterprise through the technology spillover effect,and exacerbate the effect of the machine replacement.Moreover,the impact of technological progress in the upstream on the downstream employment(referred to as the forward correlation effect)is greater than that of the downstream technological progress on the upstream employment(referred to as the backward correlation effect).Further research shows that: in the long run,the impact of automated capital-biased technological progress on employment of manufacturing enterprises presents a "U-shaped" non-linear relationship,and there is an "inverted U-shaped" and "U-shaped" relationship between the employment and high and low skilled labor force.Thirdly,this paper studies the impact of automated capital-biased technological progress of manufacturing corporates on wages.Based on task-based model analysis,it can be seen that low-level tasks replaced by automated capital-biased technological progress are mainly completed by low-skilled labor,while high-level tasks created are mainly undertaken by high-skilled labor.Therefore,such technological progress has a destructive effect on low-skilled labor.It has a creative effect on the highly skilled labor force,and at the same time,it has a productivity effect,which then affects the wage level of labor force.The destructive and creative effects of technological progress and the mismatch between technological progress and labor force skill lead to a widening wage gap between high-skilled and low-skilled labor force.The empirical test results show that the automated capital-biased technological progress of manufacturing enterprises has a positive effect on the wage level,mainly through the creative effect and productivity effect of highly skilled labor force,while the destructive effect of lowskilled labor inhibits this positive effect.The benchmark regression results show that the automated capital-biased technological progress of manufacturing enterprises will widen the wage gap between high-skilled labor and low-skilled labor.The test of the mediation effect model shows that the destructive effect of low-skilled labor and the creative effect of high-skilled labor are two intermediate influencing mechanisms.The panel threshold model results reflect that the mismatch between technological progress and labor force skill intensifies the widening of wage gap caused by automated capitalbiased technological progress.The test results of industry correlation effect show that the automated capital-biased technological progress of upstream(downstream)manufacturing enterprises will improve the wage level of downstream(upstream)enterprises through technology spillover effect,and widen the wage gap between highskilled and low-skilled labor force,and the forward correlation effect is greater than the backward correlation effect.Fourthly,this paper takes industrial robots as a typical case of automated capitalbiased technological progress,expounds the origin and development history of industrial robots and the development status of industrial robots at home and abroad,and analyzes the changes in the core production factors and production organization mode of manufacturing industry under the large-scale application of industrial robots.Moreover,the impact of industrial robot application on employment in manufacturing industry is investigated by using the data of China’s industrial robot application from the International Federation of Robotics(IFR).The empirical test results show that at present the use of industrial robots in China presents a substitution effect on the employment scale of the manufacturing industry,and has a positive promotion effect on the wage level of the manufacturing industry,which is consistent with the above results.This paper tries to make new exploration in the following aspects.Firstly,according to the practice of Acemoglu(2002),Decanio(2016),Aum et al.(2018),capital is divided into automated capital and non-automated capital.Based on the stochastic frontier model in the form of translogarithmic production function,microdata measurement of listed manufacturing companies is used to find that their technological progress is biased towards automated capital.It enriched the connotation of biased technological progress and deepened the understanding of the direction of technological progress in China’s manufacturing industry.Secondly,based on Acemoglu(2002),this paper innovates that the skill level of representative consumers reflects the level of technological progress.Based on the new perspective that representative consumers provide skilled labor to maximize income,this paper analyzes the influencing factors of automated capital-biased technological progress.Thirdly,based on the task-based model proposed by Acemoglu and Restrepo(2018),this paper argues that automated capital-biased technological progress will replace lowlevel work tasks and generate new higher-level work tasks,further affecting employment,wage level and wage gap.The influence mechanism is analyzed,including destruction effect,creation effect,productivity effect,output scale effect,technological progress and labor skill mismatch effect.Moreover,based on the impact of automated capital-biased technological progress on work tasks,this paper deconstructs the effect of such technological progress on total employment,identifies the impact of such technological progress on the employment of low-skilled labor force,and tests the heterogeneity effect on the employment of labor force in different positions.It further analyzes the main influencing factors of the employment destruction of low-skilled labor force and the employment creation effect of highskilled labor force,and enriches the mechanism analysis of the influence of automated technology and biased technological progress on employment and wages.Fourthly,there are few studies on the impact of automated technology progress of manufacturing enterprises on labor demand and wages of upstream and downstream enterprises.Based on the perspective of industry association and technology spillover effect,this paper examines the influence and mechanism of automated capital-biased technological progress on employment and wage of upstream(downstream)enterprises in manufacturing industry,so as to comprehensively and systematically explore the employment and wage effect of such technological progress.Fifthly,the empirical data about the impact of automated capital-biased technological progress on employment and wages is regional and industry data,which has a larger sample particle size This paper provides evidence on the level of enterprise,to more accurately capture the different influences of automated capital-biased technological progress of manufacturing corporates on employment and wages and provide accurate and reliable basis for policy making. |
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