社保投入有利于企业提高劳动生产率吗？——基于“中国企业—劳动力匹配调查”数据的实证研究

Is Social Security Investment Beneficial to Enterprises to Improve Labor Productivity?:Empirical Research Based on“China Employer-Employee Survey”

现有文献认为,社保投入对企业劳动生产率存在成本效应、激励效应两种不同的影响。由于大样本数据的缺乏,现阶段对于社会保险企业投入的讨论大多停留在其对企业生产的抑制效应。然而,本文运用随机分层抽样的"中国企业-劳动力匹配调查"(CEES)数据,就社保投入对于企业劳动生产率的影响效应、影响机制进行了创新性地实证研究。基准回归表明,在充分剔除选择性偏误的前提下,社保投入对于劳动生产率的激励效应更强。随着人均社保投入每增加10%,企业劳动生产率平均提高3.5%。进一步地,实证研究发现:人力资本、创新精神与管理效率是社保投入对于企业劳动生产率产生激励效应的重要渠道;其中,与人力资本、创新精神相比,管理效率更为重要。与大部分基于发达经济体微观数据的实证研究有所不同,本文发现:对于现阶段我国经济而言,社保投入对企业生产要素投入的成本挤出效应并不明显,社会保险通过激励员工从而促进企业生产率的发展。

Chinese corporate social insurance investment has attracted widespread attention in the academic and social circles in recent years. The nominal social securitycontribution rate in China has remained high. Nowadays, the social insurance expenditure of Chinese enterprises has accounted for 40% to 50% of the labor cost, which is significantly higher than other developments countries. Therefore, enterprises have been eager for high social insurance to suppress their business development. Some Chinese scholars also believe that high social insurance increases the labor cost of enterprises, squeezes the capital investment of enterprises for technological progress and development, and is not conducive to enterprise productivitygrowth. Overall, according to the existing literature, social security investment has two different effects on the labor productivity of a company: cost effect and incentive effect. Due to the lack of large sample data, the discussions on the investment of social insurance companies at this stage mostly stay on their inhibitory effects on the production of enterprises.However, this paper uses the data of the"China Employer-Employee Survey"(CEES) of random stratified sampling to carry out innovative empirical research on the effect and mechanism of social security investment on enterprise labor productivity. The data was jointly developed by Wuhan University, Stanford University, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and other well-known research institutions at home and abroad. It is carried out nationwide every two years. Chinese manufacturing companies are the main research. The interviewed enterprises have important data on social security contributions, the number of people insured, wage levels, labor costs, technological innovation, production conditions, and a series of corporate characteristics. Compared with the existing data, the survey is the first large-scale micro-database in China to effectively collect corporate real social insurance and corporate welfare behavior.Benchmark regression shows that under the premise of fully eliminating selective bias, for the current range of corporate social security investment levels, social insurance investment has a stronger incentive effect on labor productivity. With each 10% increase in per capita social security expenditure, the labor productivity of enterprises will increase by 3.5% on average; and each standard deviation increase in the social security contribution rate will increase the average labor productivity of enterprises by 3.8%. Further, empirical research finds that human capital, innovation spirit and management efficiency are important channels for social insurance investment to have an incentive effect on the labor productivity of the enterprise and management efficiency is more important than human capital and innovation spirit. Different from most empirical studies based on micro data of developed economies, this paper finds that for the current stage of China’s economy, the cost of social security inputs to the inputs of enterprise production factors is not obvious.Social insurance promotes enterprises by motivating employees to increase productivity.This article innovatively proposes that moderate social insurance enterprise investment promotes the development of corporate economic efficiency, and clarifies that social insurance promotes enterprise development through three intermediary channels: human capital incentives, innovative spirit and management efficiency.