关键词: 最低工资, 制造业转移, SLX 模型

Abstract: The orderly transfer of the manufacturing sector is of great significance to the stable and balanced development of China’s economy. We use the data on manufacturing and minimum wage at the city level aggregated from China’ s Industrial Enterprise Survey 1998 - 2013 to investigate the causal relationship between minimum wage and the spatial distribution of manufacturing. The results show that the increase of the minimum wage reduces the share of the output value of the manufacturing sector, the share of the number of employees and the share of the number of enterprises above the designated scale, and promotes the transfer of the manufacturing nearby. The effect of minimum wage on the share of manufacturing is heterogeneous: the higher the capital density and the higher the proportion of state-owned enterprises, the smaller the impact of the rise of minimum wage on the share of manufacturing. Further mechanism test shows that the rise of minimum wage inhibits the establishment of new enterprises, promotes the cross-regional capital allocation and the exit of enterprises. The conclusion of this paper helps to clarify the impact of rising labor costs on the spatial distribution of the manufacturing industry and provides an important policy reference for the distribution and transfer of the manufacturing industry across regions.

Key words: Minimum Wage, Transfer of Manufacturing Sector, SLX Model