| CHEN Dong,刘威.Digital Government Construction and Labor Employment Choice Strategies: Based on a Quasi-natural Experiment of Big Data Governance Institutional Reform[J].The Journal of quantitative and technical economics,2025,(12):66-85 |
| 数字政府建设与劳动者就业选择策略——基于大数据治理机构改革的准自然实验 |
| Digital Government Construction and Labor Employment Choice Strategies: Based on a Quasi-natural Experiment of Big Data Governance Institutional Reform |
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| 中文关键词: 数字政府 就业选择策略 人力资本 配置效率 |
| 英文关键词: Digital Government Employment Choice Strategies Human Capital Allocation Efficiency |
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| 中文摘要: |
| 在高学历劳动者过度涌入公共部门就业的背景下，数字化建设能否在提高政府治理效能的同时，引导劳动者的职业选择，优化人力资本配置，是本文关注的焦点。本文将各地区的大数据治理机构改革视为数字政府建设的准自然实验，采用 2012~2022 年中国家庭追踪调查数据，考察数字政府对劳动者就业选择策略的影响及其作用机制，并进一步评估其对人力资本配置效率的影响。研究结果发现，数字政府能够显著促进高学历劳动者进入私人部门就业，并主要通过抑制寻租活动、促进经济稳定和提高公共服务水平共同作用于劳动者的就业选择。数字政府的就业选择效应在就业竞争力强、利己性就业动机强、当地数字政府治理职能强的劳动者中更为明显；数字政府在改变劳动者就业选择策略的同时，还发挥了优化人力资本配置的作用，有助于提高人力资本的微观岗位匹配度和宏观配置效率。本文通过解构数字政府的治理机制，为破解人力资源错配难题提供了新方案。 |
| 英文摘要: |
| The shift from traditional factor-driven growth to innovation-driven development is an inevitable choice for China’s economic transformation. In this process, optimizing human capital allocation is a critical pathway to stimulating endogenous economic dynamism. Highly educated workers entering the private sector with their profound knowledge reserves and acute market awareness are the backbone of innovation and entrepreneurship activities, thereby fostering high-quality economic development. However, recent years have witnessed increasingly severe imbalances in human capital allocation to the public sector. In 2022, workers with associate degrees or higher accounted for 66.3% of public sector employment—more than double the societal average of 24.1%. This stands in stark contrast to the declining attractiveness of private sector employment. The proportion of graduates aspiring to work in the private sector has recently fallen below 30%, while the share of postgraduate researchers in private research and development teams has decreased by 2.2 percentage points compared to 2012 levels. As the private sector contributes over 70% of technological innovation achievements, the employment preference of highly educated individuals for the public sector may create crowding-out effects. This can lead to severe talent mismatches, potentially undermining private sector innovation vitality and long-term economic growth.As highly educated workers are flocking to public sector employment, digital government has emerged as a pivotal governance reform strategy, offering innovative solutions to enhance sectoral employment returns and reshape labor career choices. This study leverages the institutional reform of big data governance agencies, a cornerstone policy of digital government transformation, as an exogenous policy shock.Using CFPS data,it investigates how digital governance influences labor employment strategies and their underlying mechanisms, ultimately focusing on human capital allocation efficiency. Our findings reveal the following.First, digital government alters labor employment strategies by encouraging highly educated worker to entry the private sector. This conclusion remains robust across various sensitivity checks, including parallel trend tests, model replacements, sample adjustments, heterogeneous treatment effect analyses, placebo tests, balance tests, anticipated effect controls, core variable substitutions, exclusion of concurrent policy interference, and omitted variable tests. Second, causal mediation analysis based on double machine learning shows that digital government exerts governance effects by suppressing rent-seeking, enhancing economic stability, improving public service levels, and thereby incentivizing private sector employment. Third, the impact of digital government exhibits significant heterogeneity, being most pronounced among workers with stronger employment competitiveness, self-interested career motivations, or residing in regions with robust digital governance functions. Fourth, the economic implications of digital government are profound.It not only improves micro-level human capital-job matching but also enhances macro-level allocation efficiency, thereby unlocking the innovation potential of human capital. Therefore, governments should prioritize digital infrastructure development by leveraging digital technologies to streamline administration and delegate powers, transform government functions, enhance economic governance capabilities, and create stable macroeconomic environments for the private sector. Moreover, continuous improvement in public service levels should be pursued to achieve universal access to public services.The marginal contributions of this study are as follows.First, unlike existing literature that examines the economic effects of digital government using regional or enterprise data, this study employs micro-individual data. It analyzes the employment choices of highly educated workers and investigates how digital government influences their career selection strategies between public and private sectors, thereby providing a novel perspective for research on the economic impacts of digital governance. Second, theoretically, this study innovatively incorporates digital government into the analytical framework of employment choice, focusing on the mechanisms through which the effectiveness of digital governance affects the career strategies of highly educated workers. Empirically, it examines these mechanisms to reveal the intrinsic logic underlying sectoral employment decisions. Third, the study extends its focus to human capital allocation efficiency. It evaluates the impact of digital government on human capital-job matching from a micro perspective and assesses its influence on the deviation between the marginal output and marginal costs of human capital from a macro perspective. Additionally, it explores how to unleash the innovative potential of human capital. Considering the persistent “civil service examination fever” and the dual constraints of human capital misallocation on economic growth, this study attempts to provide a new plan for optimizing human capital allocation and realizing talent dividends in the digital era. |
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