Labor Market Monopsony Power in Chinese Manufacturing Firms:Identification and Estimation in an Environment of Non-Neutral Technological Change
Labor market monopsony(i.e.,firms have a certain degree of wage pricing power)not only hinders effective labor allocation but also distorts the primary distribution of national income.In recent years,China's labor market has undergone profound changes.In this context,it is significant to accurately grasp the monopsony status of China's labor market for scientific planning and promoting the market-oriented reform of production factors.However,due to the lack of ideal indicators,empirical research on labor market monopsony has been scarce for a long time.Recently,academia has begun to use microdata to conduct quantitative research on labor market monopsony(e.g.,Yeh et al.,2022).However,the results may be seriously biased in the environment of non-neutral technological change.Therefore,this paper proposes a structural estimation method that can consider non-neutral technological change,thus directly identifying and estimating labor market monopsony at the micro level.The estimated results based on the National Tax Survey data from 2008 to 2016 show that Chinese manufacturing firms have a considerable degree of monopsony power in the labor market:the weighted average markdown(the ratio of marginal income of labor to wage)is 2.08,that is,workers only get about 48％of their marginal output.The markdown remains stable during the sample period,which means that the distribution relationship between labor and capital has not changed significantly during this period and capital still occupies a dominant position.Our results show that ignoring non-neutral technological change may lead to biased estimates of markdown,resulting in misleading conclusions on some important issues.Our results show that it is necessary to pay attention to not only the monopoly power of firms in the product market but also the monopsony power of firms in the labor market and protect the legitimate rights and interests of workers.At present,China still faces some prominent problems in labor allocation,and it is necessary to further reduce or even eliminate labor market distortions through deepening reform.By comparing our results with those obtained by using other representative estimation methods,this paper emphasizes that the introduction of non-neutral technological change is crucial for the accurate estimation of monopsony power in the labor market,which provides a useful supplement to existing literature.This paper analyzes China's manufacturing labor market monopsony situation since the financial crisis from a micro perspective,providing important empirical support for breaking down labor market monopsony obstacles and improving the primary income distribution system in the new era.
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万方数据
