劳动力保护与企业风险——来自2008年新《劳动合同法》的证据

Labor Protection and Firm Risk:Evidence from the New Labor Contract Law

本文利用2003—2015年我国A股上市公司数据,借助2008年新《劳动合同法》的实施对劳动密集度不同的行业影响不同,识别了劳动力保护对以股价波动性衡量的企业风险的因果影响。结果显示,受新《劳动合同法》实施影响越大的企业,其股价波动性越小,即劳动力保护降低了企业风险。这一结论在经过平行趋势检验、排除同期其它政策的影响、使用不同方法计算企业风险和劳动密集度、使用平衡面板等一系列稳健性检验后,仍然成立。机制分析表明,新《劳动合同法》的实施会增加企业的杠杆率和违约概率,企业出于“风险规避”的动机会增加现金持有,以抓住未来的优良投资机会。由于国有企业对劳动力保护制度的执行度更强,杠杆率高和流动比率低的企业有更强的“风险规避”动机,因此新《劳动合同法》实施后,国有企业风险出现更大幅度的下降。本文的结论表明,在防范控制企业风险过程中,劳动力保护措施是可选的有效政策工具。

Summary:One of the most important tasks for the Chinese economy is to control economic and financial risks to achieve high-quality growth.Firms are the basic unit of economic activity and their risk levels not only affect their profitability but also the risk level of the whole economy.Therefore,it is important for both researchers and policymakers to understand the determinants of firms'risk level.Research shows that firms'risk level can be directly affected by their ownership structure,manager characteristics,and corporate governance,and can also be influenced by monetary policies,subsidies,leadership transitions,government connections,bank connections,and social networks.However,few studies investigate the role of labor protection in firms'risk level.Labor protection can affect firms'risk level through multiple channels.First,according to risk mitigation theory,firms(especially more financially constrained firms)may make safer investments to sustain their ability to invest in potentially profitable projects in the future.However,according to risk-shifting theory,firms may shift from safer investments to riskier investments in the face of greater distress risk,which will result in a higher risk level.Thus,the net effect of labor protection on firms'risk is unclear.We estimate the effect of labor protection on firms'risk using a dataset of Chinese listed firms from 2003 to 2015.We study this effect by analyzing the impact of the adoption of the Labor Contract Law in 2008.This law provides an ideal opportunity to study the effect of labor protection on firms'risk.First,it has significantly increased the level of labor protection;second,its effect is different in industries with different labor intensity levels.We construct a difference-in-differences(DID)model based on industries with different labor intensity levels just before the adoption of the law,in which the more labor-intensive industries are the treatment group and the less labor-intensive industries are the control group.The first difference results from the change in the risk level before and after the adoption of the Labor Contract Law,whereas the second difference results from the difference in this change in the risk level between industries with higher labor intensity and industries with lower labor intensity.Our regression results show that the Labor Contract Law has significantly lowered firms'risk.This result is valid after parallel trend analysis,controlling for the effects of contemporary policies,using different measures of the dependent and independent variables,and using a balanced panel sample.Mechanism analysis supports risk mitigation theory.Specifically,firms face increased leverage and greater distress risk under the shock of the Labor Contract Law.As a result,they hold more cash for potentially profitable projects in the future.Additionally,we investigate the heterogeneous effects of the Labor Contract Law and find that it has a larger effect on state-owned firms,firms with higher leverage,and firms with a lower current ratio.Our results suggest that implementing laws to enhance labor protection is an effective way to control firms'risk.Our paper makes two contributions to the literature.First,we identify the causal relationship between labor protection and firms'risk level.The effect of the labor market financial market is a popular topic;however,relatively few studies investigate this subject in China.Therefore,our paper enriches this line of research.In addition,we provide further evidence of the effect of the Labor Contract Law on firms'risk.The effect of this law is a topic of intense discussion:some claim that it helps protect employees'rights and encourages employees to work harder,whereas others state that it increases labor costs and reduces firms'profitability.We find that the Labor Contract Law significantly affects firms'risk.