| 吉萍,蒋为.城市通勤效率提升的要素收入分配效应——基于劳动力空间配置的视角[J].数量经济技术经济研究,2026,(10):89-115 | | 城市通勤效率提升的要素收入分配效应——基于劳动力空间配置的视角 | | The Effect of Improved Urban Commuting Efficiency on Factor Income Distribution: A Spatial Labor AllocationPerspective | | | | DOI： | | 中文关键词: 通勤效率 劳动收入份额 劳动力空间配置 | | 英文关键词: Commuting Efficiency Labor Income Share Spatial Allocation of Labor | | 基金项目: | | | 中文摘要: | | 优化城市内部空间资源配置，是新发展阶段推动城市高质量发展的重要议题。作为城市空间治理的关键抓手，通勤效率提升所引致的劳动力空间再配置，正深刻重塑着微观层面的要素收入分配格局。本文基于劳动力空间配置视角，结合买方寡头垄断劳动力市场理论、工资发布模型与企业招聘静态筛选机制，将通勤效率引入城市内部劳动力空间配置与企业生产决策中，建立起包含居住—就业区位选择、企业招聘筛选与买方寡头垄断的劳动力市场空间均衡模型，分析了城市通勤效率提升的要素收入分配效应。随后利用城市地铁站点开通作为政策冲击，基于企业—站点层面数据，采用空间双重差分模型对理论预测进行实证检验。研究发现，地铁站点开通显著提高了企业劳动收入份额，且该效应随距离增加而衰减，在站点2千米范围内最为明显。机制分析表明，一方面，通勤效率提升改善了劳企匹配效率，通过缓解雇佣约束和优化人岗匹配提高了企业有效劳动供给，尤其促进了资本—劳动替代性更强企业的劳动收入份额增长。另一方面，通勤效率提升削弱了企业的买方垄断势力，通过增强劳动力流动性和议价能力压低了企业垄断租金，推动收入分配向劳动力倾斜。本文为通过优化城市内部空间资源配置和促进职住平衡以改善收入分配提供重要的政策启示。 | | 英文摘要: | | As urban development enters a new stage, improving commuting efficiency has become a key policy lever for optimizing spatial resource allocation, promoting jobs-housing balance, and improving the distribution of income. With urban expansion and growing jobs-housing separation, commuting conditions not only shape residents’ employment choices and firms’ search for workers, but also shorten effective intra-urban distances, reduce the segmentation of local labor markets, and reshape the spatial mobility and allocation of labor. Thus, improved commuting efficiency is not merely a matter of transport infrastructure; it is also an important factor affecting worker-firm matching efficiency, the bargaining environment in the labor market, and firms’ labor share. Clarifying its micro-level distributional effects is therefore important for understanding the economic consequences of changes in urban spatial structure and for improving income distribution through more efficient spatial resource allocation. Against this background, this paper incorporates commuting efficiency into a framework of firms’ production decisions and the spatial allocation of labor, and examines how improved urban commuting efficiency affects firms’ labor share through two channels: worker-firm matching efficiency and monopsony power.
At the theoretical level, this paper incorporates commuting efficiency into the intra-urban spatial allocation of labor and firms’ production decisions, and develops a spatial equilibrium model of the labor market that takes workers’ residential locations as given and integrates their workplace choices, firms’ recruitment screening, and oligopsonistic labor market competition. The theoretical analysis shows that improved commuting efficiency affects firms’ labor share through two main channels. The first is the worker-firm matching efficiency channel: higher commuting efficiency expands the range of workers accessible to firms and enlarges the candidate pool, thereby raising the screening threshold and improving match quality, which in turn increases effective labor input and affects the labor share, with the direction depending on the elasticity of substitution between capital and effective labor. The second is the monopsony power channel: higher commuting efficiency reshapes workers’ spatial mobility and outside options, as well as the geographic and sectoral composition of labor supply, thereby changing the labor supply elasticity faced by firms. When this elasticity increases, firms’ wage markdowns decline, shifting income distribution toward labor. Overall, the effect of improved commuting efficiency on labor share depends on the joint forces of enhanced worker-firm matching efficiency, factor substitution patterns, and changes in the bargaining structure of the labor market.
At the empirical level, this paper uses urban metro station openings as a quasi-natural experiment capturing improvements in commuting efficiency and estimates a spatial difference-in-differences model using panel data on firms and their nearest metro stations. The baseline results show that metro station openings significantly increase firms’ labor share, with the effect most pronounced within a two-kilometer radius of stations; the finding remains robust across a battery of robustness checks. Mechanism tests show that improved commuting efficiency enhances worker-firm matching efficiency by alleviating underhiring constraints among firms with stronger labor demand, improving labor investment efficiency, upgrading firms’ workforce skill composition, and increasing output per worker. It also reshapes the distributional relationship between workers and firms by strengthening workers’ bargaining power and weakening firms’ monopsony power. Further heterogeneity analysis shows that the effect is more pronounced among larger firms, in more concentrated industries, and in less spatially centralized cities, suggesting that the distributional effect of improved commuting efficiency depends on firm characteristics, industrial structure, and urban spatial structure.
In terms of policy, improving urban commuting efficiency should be incorporated into the policy framework for improving the primary distribution of income and enhancing urban spatial governance. On the one hand, cities should continue to improve metro systems and public transportation networks, reduce intra-urban spatial frictions, and enhance workers’ cross-district employment accessibility. These measures can expand firms’ recruitment radius, improve worker-firm matching efficiency, and create more outside employment options for workers. On the other hand, transport infrastructure investment should be coordinated with employment services, skills training, and labor market governance, so that improvements in commuting conditions can be translated into higher-quality job matching and a fairer bargaining relationship between workers and firms. At the same time, policy implementation should fully account for differences in firm size, industrial concentration, and urban spatial structure, with particular attention to large firms, highly concentrated industries, and less spatially centralized urban areas with insufficient connectivity. In this way, improved commuting efficiency can play a more effective role in optimizing the spatial allocation of labor and improving income distribution. | | 查看全文 相关附件： 下载数据代码附录 |
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