混合所有制改革提高了国有企业内部薪酬差距吗

Will the Mixed-ownership Reform Increase the Executive-Employee Pay Gap of SOEs?

国有企业薪酬制度是学术研究的重要话题,也受到了社会各界的广泛关注。设计出有效的薪酬激励契约是改善国有企业经营绩效的关键一环。立足于新时期全面深化国企改革的大背景,本文从股权结构和董事会结构两方面构建混合所有制改革变量,探究了混合所有制改革对国有企业内部薪酬结构的影响。论文研究发现,在国有企业混合所有制改革过程中,非国有股东持股和向国有企业委派董事显著扩大了企业内部薪酬差距,具体表现为高管薪酬提高而员工薪酬降低。进一步看,行业竞争程度增强了混合所有制改革对国有企业内部薪酬差距的正向影响,且混合所有制改革后内部薪酬差距的上升效应在市场化程度较低地区的国有企业中更明显。作用机制检验的结果显示,混合所有制改革降低了政策性负担,同时也提高了国有企业的融资约束水平。此外,基于中介效应的检验发现,改革后混合所有制企业通过提高内部薪酬差距显著改善了公司业绩。本文研究结论在丰富国有企业混合所有制改革和内部薪酬差距相关领域学术研究的同时,也为当前混合所有制改革的经济后果提供了经验证据,为进一步推进我国国有企业改革提供了政策建议。

The compensation scheme in state-owned enterprises(SOEs)is an im-portant topic of academic research and also attracts extensive attention from the commu-nities of practice.For a long time,in SOEs,the original state-owned economy and the system of resource allocation based on administrative order have had an important im-pact on the income distribution of SOEs.SOEs tend to adopt“partial market economy”and one-size-fits-all administrative-based wage system which has aroused much criti-cism.The pay ceiling order for executives based on administrative measures has instead caused widespread perk and executive corruption.As an important reform policy of SOEs,whether mixed-ownership reform can improve the internal compensation struc-ture of SOEs is a research question with theoretical and practical significance.Against the background of comprehensively deepening the SOE reform in the new era,this paper examines how the mixed-ownership reform affects SOEs’compensation structure from the perspectives of ownership structure and board structure using data of listed SOEs from 2003 to 2017.We find that non-state shareholding and assigning di-rectors to SOEs significantly increase the executive compensation and decrease the em-ployee wage,thus resulting in a larger executive-employee pay gap.Further,industry competition strengths the positive effect of the mixed-ownership reform on the execu-tive-employee pay gap and the rise of the executive-employ-ee pay gap in mixed-ownership enterprises is more pronounced in regions with low marketization level.The results of mechanism test show that the mixed-ownership reform reduces the policy burden and raises SOEs’financing constraint level.In addition,the medi-ation test suggests that mixed-ownership enterprises improve performance through increasing the executive-employee pay gap after the reform.Compared with previous literature,the possible contributions and innovations of this paper are as follows.First,the current research on the economic consequences of the mixed-ownership reform of SOEs mostly focuses on the macro economy,operating efficiency,corporate governance,and financial decision.Few studies pay attention to the internal compensation structure of the enterprises.Based on the new perspective of ex-ecutive-employee pay gap,this paper examines the design of the internal compensation contract from the angle of internal compensation structure.And for the first time,this paper provides empirical evidence of the relationship between mixed-ownership reform and executive-employee pay gap,which adds to the literature of mixed-ownership re-form.Second,the existing literature mostly discusses the causes of executive-employee pay gap from the optimal contract theory and the manage-ment power theory.Since Chi-na is still an emerging market in transition,the natural property rights difference be-tween SOEs and private enterprises will also affect the executive-employee pay gap.Based on the new perspective of mixed-ownership reform,this paper explores how ex-ecutive-employee pay gap will change with the reduction of state-owned shares and the participation of non-state shareholders in corporate governance in SOEs in the process of the mixed-ownership reform.As a result,this paper also enrich-es existing domestic and foreign literature on the causes of executive-employee pay gap.Our study also has policy implications.This paper shows that the mixed-ownership reform has positive impacts on the compensation scheme of SOEs and can help im-prove the internal compensation structure of SOEs,which supports the current mixed-ownership reform policy implemented by government and is relevant for the fu-ture SOE reform.