Minimum Wage,Financing Constraint And Enterprise R&D Investment

As one of the important means to protect the basic living standard and legitimate rights and interests of the laborers,especially the grass-roots working people,the minimum wage policy has been widely implemented all over the world.Since the introduction of the minimum wage policy for enterprises in 1993,the minimum wage standards in various regions have experienced a continuous and substantial increase.On the one hand,the government may improve the income level of workers,especially low-skilled workers,and improve their quality of life and nutrition by forcing them to pay higher wages.Labor workers wages rise,on the other hand,at the same time,will cause the enterprise labor costs increase,rising labor costs will not only eliminated the industry some low value-added enterprises,upgrading,element substitution effects may also through cost and resource relocation influences manufacturing enterprises such as R&D,thus influence to enterprise's production and investment behavior.Based on the microeconomic data of more than 820,000 manufacturing enterprises in the database of Chinese industrial enterprises from 2005 to 2007 as the research sample,this paper empirically investigated the impact of the minimum wage standard change on the R&D investment of enterprises by matching the minimum wage data of 2,789 districts(counties)in China from 2004 to 2007.It is found that after controlling for the regional effect,time effect,industry effect and the characteristic factors that may affect the R&D investment of enterprises,the increase of the minimum wage standard is conducive to the improvement of the R&D intensity of Chinese manufacturing enterprises.The influence of the minimum wage standard on the R&D investment intensity of manufacturing enterprises is of scale heterogeneity.The increase of the minimum wage standard only has an incentive effect on the R&D investment of small and medium-sized enterprises,but has no significant effect on the R&D investment increase of large enterprises.Endogenous financing constraints have a moderating effect on the relationship between the minimum wage standard and the R&D investment of manufacturing enterprises.To be specific,when other conditions remain unchanged,the looser the endogenous financing constraint is,the weaker the incentive effect of the minimum wage standard on the R&D investment of enterprises is,and vice versa.The relationship between the minimum wage standard and the R&D investment of enterprises has no ownership and regional heterogeneity.However,the influence of endogenous financing constraints on r & d investment has regional heterogeneity,and the regulating effect of endogenous financing constraints on the relationship between minimum wage standard and r & d investment also has regional heterogeneity.Based on the research conclusion of this paper,the author believes that the minimum wage standard system should be standardized and strictly implemented,the economic regulation function of the minimum wage policy should be given play to,and the minimum wage system should be used to promote the transformation and upgrading of manufacturing enterprises while improving the operation mechanism of the labor market.At the same time,pay attention to the coordination between the minimum wage system and the enterprise financing system.In addition,due to the regional heterogeneity of the relationship between the minimum wage system,endogenous financing constraints and the R&D investment of enterprises,the relevant policies should be formulated with "one place,one policy" and avoid "one size fits-all".