出口制造业服务化与实际工资水平

信息化、服务化是推动传统制造业企业转型升级的重要途径。综合利用一系列数据库的匹配数据，实证分析我国制造业服务化在影响微观企业实际工资水平中的作用及内在机制，研究发现：（1）企业服务化过程中带来的集约效应与扩展效应可以直接提升企业的实际工资水平；（2）服务化短时间内可以通过提升生产率、降低产品价格（加成率）的方式强化出口企业“薄利多销”的优势，进而提升实际工资水平，但对产品质量的影响却不明显；（3）不同领域的服务投入对企业工资水平所带来的影响差异很大，其影响力度由高到低排序为分销、交通、金融、信息。

Servitization of Manufacturing and Real Wages

With the advent of China’s economic New Normal, China’s long-standing Demographic Dividend is gradually disappearing, and the structural problems of Chinese traditional manufacturing industry have also become prominent, and then its output growth rate has experienced a large decline. China’s long-term sluggish external demands and the quietly changing domestic demands are making the situation of its export manufacturing more difficult. At the same time, the sluggish wage growth as caused by the dilemma of the manufacturing industry and the rapid increase of household consumption leverage have both brought about a huge pressure on the consumer downgrade. Fortunately, China's Internet economy during this period has developed very brightly. The emerging foreign trade service industry and the cross-border e-commerce platforms have sprung up everywhere, providing comprehensive assistance to the traditional manufacturing exporters at various levels in finance, customs declaration, logistics and sales, which have enriched the business models and saved the costs of the enterprises. Meanwhile, the proportion of service input by manufacturing enterprises is getting higher and higher, and manufacturing service has become a major trend in the industrial transformation of traditional manufacturing. The main work of this paper is to link manufacturing servitization with real wage levels, put forward a theoretical hypothesis that manufacturing servitization can raise the average wage levels, and then make an empirical test with the highly subdivided micro-enterprise historical data. We argue that manufacturing enterprises improve their real wages mainly through “expansion effect” and “intensive effect” in their service process, and the empirical results show that servitization can enhance the total factor productivity (TFP) and strengthen product price advantage, which endogenously improve the actual wage levels. The main innovations of this paper are as follows. Firstly, this paper links manufacturing servitization with the average wage level, and sets forth its internal mechanism for the first time, and provides a new paradigm for the study of transformation and upgrading of export manufacturing and its wage levels. Secondly, this paper uses highly subdivided micro-enterprise data for an empirical analysis, and our differentiated data provide rich information on multiple dimensions at the enterprise, industry, and country levels. More importantly, the manufacturing servitization indicators calculated according to the WIOD database are medium-level data at the industry level, which are not closely related to the micro data of the industrial enterprise database. Furthermore, we also use the Heckman two-stage estimation method to correct the estimation bias, which can greatly reduce the endogenous problem caused by the two-way causality. In the end, this paper draws the following conclusions: 1) Manufacturing servitization can directly raise the real wage level of enterprises. For every 1% increase of manufacturing servitization, the real wage level will increase by about 0.346%. 2) Manufacturing servitization can enhance the advantage of export enterprises' “small profits but quick turnover” by increasing its productivity and lowering product prices (markup), and then raising the real wages level. 3) The regression results are greatly influenced by the industrial differences. The impact strength of the inputs from different service sectors on the real wages is ranked as follows: distribution, transportation, finance and information. We ultimately conclude that promoting the process of manufacturing servitization is conducive to stabilize the economic growth. The policy implications of this paper are as follows. Firstly, the government needs to actively cultivate a good e-commerce development environment, including supporting e-commerce infrastructure construction, and establishing comprehensive e-commerce experimental zones. At the same time, it is necessary to reduce the actual tax burden of manufacturing enterprises and their financing costs. Secondly, traditional manufacturing enterprises should actively embrace the Internet economy with a positive attitude, use information technologies to achieve their transformation of production strategy, rationally increase their level of servitization and accelerate their upgrading.