地方政府欠款治理与民营企业劳动雇佣决策

Local Government Arrears Settlement and Private Enterprises Employment Decisions

党的二十大报告强调,就业是最基本的民生,也是经济发展最基本的支撑。本文以国务院清理政府欠款专项督导行动为一项准自然实验,运用双重差分法系统考察了地方政府欠款治理对民营企业劳动雇佣决策的影响。实证结果表明,清理政府欠款专项督导行动显著扩大了民营企业的劳动雇佣规模,并且上述效应在财政压力较大、法律制度环境较差以及劳动力市场供给充裕的地区和盈利能力较弱、融资约束较高、劳动雇佣需求较大以及规模较小的企业中更为凸显。作用机制检验表明,清理政府欠款专项督导行动促使地方政府偿还了拖欠民营企业的账款,并显著缓解了民营企业面临的流动性约束。进一步讨论发现,清理政府欠款专项督导行动主要扩大了民营企业对硕士学历员工和非生产员工的劳动雇佣规模。此外,清理政府欠款专项督导行动显著扩大了民营企业投资规模,但却降低了资本密集度,且对员工工资无显著影响。这意味着,相对于投资规模,清理政府欠款专项督导行动对民营企业的劳动雇佣规模的扩大作用更大,而且并不是员工工资的结构性变化所致。本研究从企业劳动雇佣决策视角厘清了地方政府欠款治理的微观经济效应,能够为整改地方政府欠款现象以稳定社会就业提供理论依据和政策启示。

The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China emphasizes that employment is the most basic issue of people's livelihood and the pillar of economic growth.However,in recent years,the supply chain disruption and financial pressure caused by negative shocks such as the 2018 trade war have profoundly affected the business operation and employment decisions of private enterprises. According to the Private Enterprise Employment Relationship Trend Observation of2022, 40.2% of the surveyed private enterprises have made business adjustments by eliminating corporate departments and relevant employees to reduce human costs. To promote the long-term development of the private economy,the report of the Party's 20th National Congress in 2022 clearly stated that it is necessary to“optimize the development environment for private enterprises,protect the property rights of private enterprises and the interests of entrepreneurs.”Among all the measures to support private enterprises,guaranteeing the payment of private enterprises and improving the prevention and settlement mechanism of local government arrears to private enterprises are extremely important to effectively solve the shortage of cash flow of private enterprises and promote the private economy to play a greater role in stabilizing social employment.Therefore,local government arrears to private enterprises,which lead to the development of private enterprises,are trapped and the expectation is unstable,making the majority of workers the direct victims. In recent years, the central government has paid great attention to the problem of local government arrears to private enterprises. To stabilize social employment,the central government has held several executive meetings of the State Council to hear the report on the settlement of accounts owed to private enterprises and required the repayment of local government arrears to private enterprises within a time limit to ensure that employees get their wages in time and reduce their risk of unemployment. The action to clear up local government arrears plays an important role in stabilizing social employment. In view of this,this study takes the employment decisions of private enterprises as an entry point,takes a special supervisory action to clear arrears of local government by the State Council as a quasi-natural experiment,and empirically investigates the impact of local government arrears settlement on firms' employment decisions by using the difference-in-differences method to provide new ideas for the central government to achieve the goal of stabilizing social employment.Our results demonstrate that,compared with firms located in non-supervised regions,the action significantly expands the scale of employment of firms located in supervised regions. The cross-sectional analysis suggests that the effect is more pronounced in provinces with higher fiscal pressure,poorer legal institutions,and abundant labor supply,while it is more prominent in firms with weaker profitability,higher financial constraints,higher employment demand and smaller scale. Our mechanism tests find that the key mechanism of action lies in the clearing effect of local government arrears and the easing effect of corporate liquidity constraints. Further discussion finds that the action mainly expands the employment of master's degree holders and nonproductive employees. In addition,the action significantly increases firms' investment,reduces capital intensity,and increases firms' labor costs without influencing the wages of employees. This indicates that the action has a larger effect on employment compared with investment and is not caused by structural changes in employee wages.This study has three aspects of contribution. First,it evaluates the microeconomic effect of local government arrear management from the perspective of the employment decision of private enterprises and finds that local government arrears settlement significantly expands the employment of private enterprises in supervised areas. Second,it complements research on the determinants of employment decisions and how to stabilize social employment. The results reveal that local governments' delayed payment to private enterprises is an important factor restricting the employment of private enterprises. Third,this study has clear policy implications. In recent years, local governments have frequently defaulted on private enterprises,which has had a negative impact on the performance of private enterprises. It finds that the special supervisory action to clear arrears of local government by the State Council is conducive to clearing debts owed by local governments to private enterprises and alleviating the liquidity constraints faced by private enterprises,which favors their employment decision. This study clarifies the microeconomic effects of local government arrears settlement from the perspective of private enterprise employment decisions,which can provide policy reference for managing local government arrears and promoting employment stability.