The Impact Of Export Commodities Structure On Labor Cost:Empirical Research Based On Provicational Panel Data Of China

Basing on the comparative advantages of labor-intensive industries labor costs, not only has China obtained a huge competitive advantage in labor-intensive products but also has become a manufacturing power which mainly exports labor-intensive products trading powers. However, with the acceleration of China's capital accumulation and technology advancement in recent years, China's export commodity structure has been optimizing, that is, labor-intensive products export proportion is declining gradually and technology-intensive and capital-intensive products proportion is increasing. Under the background of the optimization, whether labor costs of manufacturing industry and its all kinds of industries will be changed or not has become the hotspot in theoretical research and empirical analysis of international economics.This article will choose ULC (Unit Labor Costs) as the measurement of labor costs. Then this article will apply the method of System of generalized moment estimation (System GMM) to explore the impact of export commodities structure on ULC (Unit Labor Costs) in terms of manufacturing industry and its all kinds of industries via using the 2002-2008s panel data of 28 provinces and cities from two aspects:overall national level and regional level. In accordance with the existing theoretical research, this article selects export commodities structure, openness, economic development level, employment figure of manufacturing industry and its all kinds of industries, the actual use of foreign direct investment (FDI), fixed asset investment ratio of manufacturing industry as explanatory variables and selects ULC(Unit Labor Costs) as explained variable to establish econometric model. The proxy variable of export commodities structure is capital and technology-intensive industry exports share in manufacturing industry exports, the proxy variable of openness is the import and export share in GDP and the proxy variable of economic development level is GDP. The results are shown as followings.First of all, in terms of manufacturing unit Labor costs, from the overall level, the export commodities structure optimization has significant negative impact on it; from regional level, the eastern region's export commodities structure optimization has insignificant positive effect on it, however, the central and western regions' export commodities structure optimization has in significant negative effect on it.Secondly, in terms of the labor-intensive industries ULC(unit Labor costs),from the overall level, the export commodities structure optimization has insignificant positive effect on it;from regional level, the eastern and central's export commodities structure optimization has insignificantly reverse effect on it, however, the western region's has not significant export commodities structure optimization has insignificant positive effect on it.Finally, in terms of the capital and technology-intensive industry ULC (unit Labor costs). from the overall level, the export commodity structure optimization has significant negative impact on it; from the regional level, the western region's export commodity structure optimization has significant negative impact on it effect, in addition, the eastern region and central's export commodity structure optimization has insignificant positive effect on it.In this paper, the research results can provide empirical basis upon examination for local government to establish corresponding economic and employment policies.What should be pointed out that is Policy layer needs to give full consideration to various characteristics of regionals' manufacturing and its all kinds of industries to enable the implementation of the policy to achieve the desired effect when making relevant policies.