| The minimum wage system originated in European capitalist countries at the end of the nineteenth century.Workers kept asking local governments to increase their wages,and even a certain degree of labor movement started.The government had to adopt a minimum wage system to increase workers’ benefits.With the proletarian revolution in the twentieth century,the minimum wage system was generally implemented in capitalist countries.In order to ensure a minimum standard of living for employees,China accepted the International Labor Organization’s No.26 Convention,the Convention on Minimum Wage Determination,in 1984,and issued the "Enterprise Minimum Wage Regulations" in 1993.However,since this regulation came out,it has been accompanied by controversy.Some people believe that the system interferes with the allocation of resources in the market economy,increases production costs,and in turn harms the competitiveness of Chinese companies;others believe that the system provides incentives for the improvement of corporate productivity and industrial upgrading.Therefore,studying the impact of the minimum wage system on corporate behavior has certain theoretical and practical significance.As the micro main body of the high-quality development of my country’s economy,the quality and intensity of its fixed asset investment also determines the direction and speed of my country’s economic development to a certain extent.At this stage,my country is actively constructing a domestic and international economic dual-cycle overall strategy.As an important driving force of the internal economic cycle,the expansion of investment scale and the improvement of investment quality are still the key to the implementation of my country’s overall economic strategy.Therefore,the sound and rapid growth of corporate fixed asset investment is a major issue that my country urgently needs to solve.From the perspective of the increase in the urban minimum wage standard,this article first points out the mechanism of the impact of the increase in the minimum wage standard on corporate fixed asset investment based on the policy background,and then based on the matching data of the urban monthly minimum wage standard and listed companies to empirically test the minimum wage standard Improve the impact on fixed asset investment of enterprises,and then distinguish between the heterogeneity of enterprises and industries,and explore the differences in the impact of rising minimum wage standards on fixed asset investment for enterprises with different characteristics.The main conclusions of the text-related research are as follows:First,this article empirically tests that an increase in the city’s monthly minimum wage can significantly promote corporate investment in fixed assets,and uses instrumental variable methods and replacement samples to conduct robustness tests,and find that the original conclusion is still valid.The increase in the minimum wage standard will increase the labor cost of enterprises.In order to maintain or expand output,it will encourage enterprises to innovate to improve enterprise production efficiency,that is,to compensate for the payment of labor factors with the growth of technological factors,and to achieve technology-biased fixed asset investment;The increase in labor costs caused by the increase in wage standards has the function of resource re-allocation.Enterprises tend to reduce the stock of assets generated under the mismatch of the factor market in the early stage,and realize the most efficient scale and profit expansion,and then use the effective factor market for more efficient fixation.Asset investment means to achieve efficiency-biased investment in fixed assets.Second,after distinguishing the heterogeneity of enterprises,this article finds that compared with capital-intensive enterprises,the increase in the minimum wage standard can promote the fixed asset investment of labor-intensive enterprises,and labor-intensive enterprises are more inclined to capital in order to compensate for the increase in labor costs.Substitution of labor factors,on the basis of achieving industrial upgrading,to further improve productivity and market competitiveness,and to invest in fixed assets to expand the scale and profit of the enterprise;secondly,compared with non-manufacturing enterprises,the increase in the minimum wage standard can promote more The fixed asset investment of manufacturing enterprises,the technology and product-oriented development model of manufacturing enterprises are more likely to seek technological progress under the stimulation of the increase in minimum wage standards,improve total factor productivity,and realize the simultaneous development of labor cost compensation and product quality upgrading.Under the stimulus of market demand,continue to expand the scale of quality-type fixed asset investment;finally,after distinguishing the heterogeneity of corporate ownership,it is found that the promotion of the increase in the minimum wage standard on corporate fixed asset investment is in private enterprises,other enterprises,foreign-funded enterprises and state-owned enterprises The reason is that foreign-funded enterprises have higher wages than state-owned,private and other types of enterprises,and the increase in the minimum wage standard has little effect on them.State-owned enterprises often enjoy the characteristics of government subsidies and soft budget constraints.To a certain extent,it has made up for the excess payment of rising labor costs.However,private and other types of enterprises are subject to financing constraints and market competition,which are more productive and responsive.Therefore,they rapidly expand fixed asset investment to achieve transformation and upgrading.Compared with companies with a higher degree of financing constraints,the increase in the minimum wage standard can promote the fixed asset investment of companies with lower financing constraints.Companies with lower financing constraints will not cause R&D due to rising labor costs due to liquidity constraints.Innovation and transformation and upgrading appear to be stretched,and they will seize structural opportunities in the market,rely on capital advantages to expand market scale,or further rely on technology and product quality upgrades to improve market competitiveness,that is,to increase fixed asset investment.This paper may have some innovation in the research perspective:This paper studies the fixed asset investment of enterprises from the perspective of minimum wage standard,manually collates the minimum wage data of 286 prefecture level cities from 2004 to 2018,and combines them with the micro data of listed enterprises in China,and clarifies the relationship between them by establishing a more scientific and rigorous quantitative analysis method,and verified the impact of the minimum wage on China’s micro enterprise investment.It not only broadens the policy evaluation perspective of the minimum wage standard,but also provides useful ideas for understanding the influencing factors of enterprise investment and formulating enterprise investment strategy. |
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