浓雾下的薪酬:空气质量与企业高管薪酬黏性

Compensation in the smog:Air quality and corporate executive compensation stickiness

空气质量已然成为影响经济发展和企业行为的重要外部因素。基于2006—2016年我国上市公司所在地空气质量数据,本文考察了雾霾污染对于高管薪酬契约的影响。研究发现,由于雾霾污染提高了企业人力的重置成本,同时也为绩效下降的高管提供了更多的机会主义解释空间,因此空气质量较差地区的上市公司高管薪酬黏性较为严重。并且高管薪酬契约中非现金性薪酬的设置对空气质量与薪酬黏性之间的关系起到了显著的调节作用,通过股权激励、行政晋升、在职消费等货币化及非货币化激励,可以有效缓和空气质量对高管薪酬黏性的影响。在考虑了衡量偏误、污染的时效因素、物价影响以及潜在的内生性问题后,前述结论依然成立。进一步研究发现,企业所处的金融环境波动、企业行业地位等影响薪酬契约的外部环境,以及高管薪酬契约的形成历史过程等因素也能影响空气质量与薪酬黏性之间的关系。本文的研究结论不仅拓展了我们对空气污染如何影响微观经济行为的认识,同时也对高管薪酬黏性前置因素的相关研究形成了有益补充,并为地方政府制定政策,平衡环境保护与经济发展提供了理论参考。

Air quality has become an important external factor affecting the social economy,however,little attention has been paid to whether and how air quality can affect corporate behavior.By making a linkage between air quality and corporate executive compensation stickiness,we shed new light on the current literature.First,most of the current studies focus on the impact of the economy on the natural environment,while our research provides empirical evidence that there is a reversed mechanism,which natural environment also could affect the development of society.Second,although various factors have been studied,which could have an impact on executive compensation stickiness,most of them focus on the traits of corporates,we expand the extant studies to the natural environment.Finally,our research also could inspire the policymaker by indicating that bad air quality could crowd out senior managers and experts,which finally damage the development of the economy.Based on the air quality data of China′s listed companies in 2006-2016,this paper examines the impact of air pollution on executive compensation contracts.It shows that smog pollution increases the cost of enterprise′s manpower replacement,which also provides more opportunistic interpretation space for the executives with declining performance.Therefore,in the listed companies with poor air quality,the top managers would possess advantages in the process of making the payment contracts.Specifically drawing on the mechanism of compensation stickiness,we argue that there would be a positive relationship between air pollution and top managers’compensation stickiness for several reasons.First,air pollution causes harm to employees’health,therefore,managers would like to ask more about compensation.Second,in the regions with air pollution,people are likely to move out rather than move in,which limits the supply of the human resource.Hence,the firms in those cities become more difficult to replace the existing managers.Finally,current researches indicated that air pollution should be responsible for lower working efficiency,which offers an excuse to low-performance managers and then enhances the degree of compensation stickiness.Further,we investigate whether managerial ownership,political promotion,and the perks of managers may influence the relationship between air pollution and top managers’compensation stickiness.Using the samples of China′s listed companies in 2006-2016,we provide empirical evidence that there is a significant relationship between air pollution and top managers’compensation stickiness.The setting of non-cash compensation in the executive compensation contract plays an important moderate role in the relationship between air quality and salary stickiness.Further,we also find that the impact of air quality on executive pay stickiness can be partially mitigated through managerial ownership,political promotion,and the perks of managers,which fully supports our hypothesis as above.In order to make sure that our results are robust,we also make several additional tests.First,the impact of air pollution on corporate behavior could not happen in the current year until more than one year later,therefore,we retest our hypothesis by using alternative variables which measure the compensations in the next year and the empirical tests show that our results remain.Second,although air pollution could affect the compensation of top managers,a mutual effect still could be existed.To reduce the threats of potential endogenous problems,we use both PSM(propensity score matching)andⅣ(instrumental variable)in the additional tests and it indicates that our results remain robust.Finally,the fluctuation of price could be an alternative explanation to managers’compensation stickiness,hence,we reconstruct the variable related to revenue by CPI(consumer price index)and our findings are still evidenced by this empirical test.We also try to identify the boundaries to our findings.In the section of further research,we focus on the moderating effects of external environments.First,although air pollution enhances the cost of replacing a top manager,the cost of seeking jobs also could be enhanced in a given setting for employees.In the further analysis,we find that in the period of the financial crisis when it could be difficult for managers to find another job,the impact of air pollution becomes insignificant.Similarly,the impact of air pollution becomes insignificant in the samples of leading companies.An explanation for this phenomenon is that it would be difficult for the managers in the leading company to find a better job in the market.Finally,we also find that the years that the firm has been listed and the CEO has serviced for the firm also could have a moderating effect on the relationship between air pollution and managers’salary.The conclusions of this paper not only expand our understanding of how air pollution affects corporate behavior but also expand the researches on the antecedent factors of executive compensation.Finally,this study also provides a theoretical reference for local governments to make policies to balance environmental protection and economic development.