空气污染治理与企业社保缴费:基于断点回归的经验证据

Air Pollution Control and Corporate Social Security Contributions:Evidence Based on a Regression Discontinuity Design

本文基于企业和城市层面的匹配数据,通过构建地理断点方法,实证评估了空气污染对企业社保缴费的影响及作用机制。研究发现,空气污染显著挤出了企业社保缴费水平,与南方地区相比,北方地区空气污染加剧后企业社保缴费水平平均下降了约4.15%,这一结果在一系列稳健性检验后依然成立。异质性检验表明,对于非劳动密集型企业、非国有企业、税务征收社保地区企业、高污染企业和高融资约束企业,空气污染的加剧对企业社保缴费水平挤出更加明显。机制分析表明,空气污染主要通过“规模收缩效应”和“缴费基数效应”降低了企业生产绩效、创新水平和员工工资总额,增加了企业雇佣灵活性,进而降低了社保缴费。进一步分析表明,空气污染不仅挤出了养老和医疗保险缴费,还挤出了失业保险与住房公积金缴费。本文研究为提升企业社保遵缴与环境污染治理提供了政策启示。

This paper empirically assesses the impact of air pollution on corporate social security contributions and its mechanism of action by constructing a geographic regression discontinuity design methodology based on matched data at the firm and city levels.It is found that air pollution significantly crowds out the level of corporate social security contributions,and the level of corporate social security contributions in the northern region declines by about 4.15 percent on average after air pollution intensification compared to the southern region,a result that still holds after a series of robustness tests.Heterogeneity tests show that the exacerbation of air pollution crowds out the level of corporate social security contributions more significantly for non-labor-intensive firms,non-state-owned firms,firms in areas where social security is levied by tax sectors,high-pollution firms,and firms with high financing constraints.Mechanism analysis shows that air pollution reduces the production performance,innovation level and total wages of enterprises through the scale contraction effect and contribution base effect,which increases the employment flexibility of enterprises,and then reduces the social security contributions.Further analysis shows that air pollution not only crowds out pension and health insurance contributions,but also crowds out unemployment insurance and housing fund contributions.This paper provides policy insights to enhance firms'social security compliance and environmental pollution management.