Title: Tracing the Source of the "New Leontief Paradox" under the Technological Revolution: Smart Manufacturing or Human Capital?

Speaker: Zhang Yu, Director of the International Trade and Investment Research Office and Associate Researcher of the National Academy of Economic Strategy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. His main research fields are international trade and international direct investment. He has published many papers in top and authoritative journals such as Management World and World Economy, and his achievements have won many provincial and ministerial awards. He presides over a number of national natural science funds, national social science funds and various provincial and ministerial research projects.

Abstract: In recent years, with the rise of the new technological revolution, some traditionally low-end industries have once again shown a trend of reverse transfer to high-income countries. This paper constructs an industrial labor intensity index to reveal the phenomenon of the transfer of relevant industries, especially low-end industries, to high-income countries in recent years, and uses the production task decomposition theory to endogenize labor productivity under the heterogeneous trade theory framework to explain the role of traditional human capital factors and emerging smart manufacturing factors in this process. On this basis, a threshold regression model is used to verify the impact of human capital and smart manufacturing on the reverse transfer of low-end industries. The research results show that compared with the traditional human capital explanation, the improvement of labor productivity relative to wage advantages caused by smart manufacturing is more likely to be the root cause of this phenomenon; this advantage mainly comes from the improvement of labor productivity and the reduction of wage costs caused by smart manufacturing, and the exertion of the positive effect of smart manufacturing is also affected by human capital factors to a certain extent. Based on this conclusion, re-recognizing the status and importance of low-end industries and reshaping the competitive advantages of low-end industries with the help of smart manufacturing technology is an important choice to cope with the adjustment of the international division of labor pattern under the new technological revolution.

Date & time: 23 April 2025, 14:00

Venue: B321, Zhixin Building, Central Campus, Shandong University