| The upgrading of quality of firms’ export products is not only the key to the success or failure of trade relationships,but also an important way to achieve sustained economic and trade growth as well as leap up the global value chain.Since the reform and opening up,China has leaped to become the world’s top exporting country by relying on the advantage of cheap labor factors.Although the quality of China’s export products has been greatly improved,the overall level is low and there are still some gaps compared with the growing quality demand of the people.On the other hand,China’s labor market is undergoing profound changes,which are manifested in the gradual reduction of the quantity of labor supply,the gradual improvement of the quality of labor supply,and the gradual establishment of an employment system for urban or rural workers to participate equally in the market competition,while the change of income disparity is still at a high hovering stage.In view of this,this paper systematically composes the relevant literature from two aspects,including labor structure and labor market system reform and its economic effects,measurement of quality of export products and its influencing factors,Based on the matching data between the Chinese Industrial Enterprise Database and the China Customs Import and Export Data,aiming to answer the following questions.That is: What are the facts about the characteristics of quality of Chinese firms’ export products since this century? Is it a trend or fluctuating increase or a decline? How do the structural changes in the labor force,such as the aging of the labor force and population and the skill structure of the labor force,affect quality of export products? How does the change of labor market system(urban-rural labor market integration policy and labor force income group restructuring policy)affect quality of export products? If these questions can be answered scientifically,it will be of great theoretical and practical significance to perfect the labor market system,accelerate the comprehensive opening up and cultivate new export competitive advantages.This paper firstly analyzes the typical facts of quality of China’s export products based on China Customs import and export database and UN Comtrade data under the framework of Hallak and Sivadasan’s(2009)products quality determination model,and the study finds that the quality of China’s exportproducts in general shows a decreasing trend after a slight increase during2000-2015,especially The decline of quality of export products during 2011-2014 is large;and the overall quality of China’s export products is not only lower than that of developed countries such as the United States,Japan and Germany,but also lower than that of developing countries such as Brazil and India;the relative competitive advantage of private firms in quality of export products is unstable;quality of export products of processing trade firms is still the deciding factor of the high and low level of quality of China’s export products;the quality of intermediate inputs is still the short board of the upgrading of manufacturing quality,is also the main constraint for China’s manufacturing industry to move to the middle and high end of the global value chain.China’s demographic transition from young to old took only about 30 years,while France and Japan took about 150 and 50 years,respectively.The aging of the labor force and population age structure will inevitably have an impact on the quality of Chinese firms’ export products.In this regard,this paper investigates the effects of labor force and population aging on quality of export products.The empirical evidence finds that population aging suppresses quality of export products of Chinese manufacturing firms,while labor force aging helps to improve quality of export products.This finding holds after excluding possible extreme values and changing the main variables,excluding the effects of the large and medium-sized cities sample and the 2008 financial crisis,and overcoming endogeneity.The sub-sample test shows that there is strong heterogeneity in the effect of aging on quality of firms’ export products across regions,industries,and types of firm ownership.The impact mechanism test indicates that the mechanism by which population aging inhibits the quality of firms’ export products lies in the reduction in the quantity of labor supply,while the mechanism by which labor aging enhances quality of export products lies in the efficiency improvement brought by the structural shift in labor supply,i.e.,the shift of labor from inefficient to efficient sectors and from sectors with slower output growth to sectors with faster output growth.With the increasing refinement of social division of labor,the hierarchy and diversity of talent requirements have become more and more prominent.From the vertical level,there are senior,middle,and junior talents,and from the horizontal level,there are various types of professionals at different levels;not only that,with the rapid urbanization process and the increasingly active migration of labor across geography in China,the diversity of labor skills of firms is also becoming more and more abundant,which will inevitably have an impact on the quality improvement of Chinese firms’ export products.For this reason,this paper examines the impact of labor force skill structure on quality of firms’ export products.The empirical evidence finds that labor force skill structure has a significant and robust effect on quality of firms’ export products,i.e.,it helps to cultivate new competitive advantages for firms’ exports;The channel test shows that workforce skill diversity not only improves the overall skill level of firms,but also promotes the level of information technology and on-the-job training,which induces firms to import and use higher intermediate imports;The heterogeneity test finds that workforce skill diversity has a greater effect on improving products quality for firms with high products differentiation,high management efficiency,and high capital intensity.Under the pressure of "promotion tournament",local governments tend to pay more attention to the interests of firms that can bring local investment and tax revenue,but not enough attention to laborers,especially migrant workers who do not have urban household registration,and the phenomenon of urban-rural labor market segmentation is still serious,and a large number of migrant workers are migrating between urban and rural areas.In this regard,this paper investigates the effect of urban-rural labor market integration policy on quality of firms’ export products.The empirical evidence finds that urban-rural labor market integration has a significant and robust promotion effect on quality of firms’ export products,and quality of local firms’ export products improves by about 12.1% after participating in the pilot integrated urban-rural employment.The dynamic effect test finds that the effect of urban-rural labor market integration on quality of firms’ export products shows an inverted U-shaped characteristic of first strengthening and then weakening.The heterogeneity test finds that urban-rural labor market integration produces a greater promotion effect on non-state firms,firms with differentiated products,firms in the inland area and labor-intensive firms.The impact mechanism test finds that the integration of urban and rural labor markets mainly promotes the improvement of quality of export products by improving firms’ labor skills,while the increase in labor cost brought by integration is to some extent detrimental to the improvement of quality of export products.Since the 18 th National Congress,the Party Central Committee has placed more importance on the gradual realization of common prosperity for all people by grasping the new development stage,and one of the necessary ways is to increase the regulation of taxation,that is,to increase the income of low-income groups,expand the proportion of middle-income groups,and reasonably moderate the high-income groups.For this reason,this paper examines the impact of labor force income group restructuring policies on quality of export products.The empirical evidence finds that labor force income group restructuring policies significantly improve quality of firms’ export products,and this finding holds after changing the definition criteria of treatment groups and the way quality of export products is measured,as well as excluding the effects of trade liberalization,the minimum wage system,the entry and exit effects of firms,and the 2004 Northeast VAT transition reform.The impact mechanism test shows that personal income tax reform improves quality of export products through the "employee efficiency wage effect" and "firm factor adjustment effect" on the one hand,and suppresses quality of export products through the "government tax pass-through effect" on the other hand.A multidimensional analysis of export trade transformation and upgrading finds that personal income tax reform not only helps to improve quality of export products,but also effectively enhances firms’ global value chain position,export technology sophistication and general trade share.This implies that the personal income tax reform improves workers’ income while also helps cultivate new competitive advantages for firms’ exports,i.e.,it achieves a win-win situation for both workers and firms. |
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