劳动保护、社保压力与企业违约风险——基于《社会保险法》实施的研究  

Labor Protection, Social Insurance Pressure and Corporate Default Risk: Evidence from the “Social Insurance Law” in China

作　　者：许红梅 李春涛 XU Hongmei;LI Chuntao(International Business College,South China Normal University;School of Economics,Henan University;School of Finance,Zhongnan University of Economics and Law)

机构地区：[1]华南师范大学国际商学院,广东广州528225 [2]河南大学经济学院,河南开封475004 [3]中南财经政法大学金融学院,湖北武汉430074

出　　处：《金融研究》2020年第3期115-133,共19页Journal of Financial Research

基　　金：国家自然科学基金青年项目(71802113、71603014);教育部人文社科基金(19YJA790038)的资助。

摘　　要：本文利用2011年《社会保险法》实施的政策冲击所造成的准自然实验情境构建双重差分模型,考察了劳动保护对上市公司债务违约风险的影响。研究发现,劳动保护加强后,劳动密集型企业的违约风险显著提升了约1.5%。在此基础上,进一步检验了劳动保护影响企业违约风险的渠道,发现劳动保护提高了企业的经营性负债水平,并最终提高了违约风险。此外,在国有企业、融资约束水平较高、信息披露水平较低和创新水平较低的企业,劳动保护对企业违约风险的影响更加显著。本文拓展了劳动保护经济后果的研究,也为评价《社会保险法》的政策后果提供了新的经验证据。本研究可为"新冠"疫情期间政府制定政策减免企业社保支出提供参考。Due to the dire impact of the financial crisis and mounting downward economic pressure, Chinese academics and practitioners have recently shown great interest in corporate default, as it is among the most disruptive events in the life of a corporation. However, few studies have examined whether labor markets affect the likelihood of corporate default. Thus, we study the effect of labor protection on default risk. Labor protection can affect default risk for a number of reasons. On the one hand, it may affect firms’ likelihood of default via the cost effect or the bargaining effect. Labor protection can increase labor costs, which increase firms’ operation leverage. Consequently, firms’ default risk may increase with greater operational pressure. On the other hand, firms with a higher likelihood of default tend to fire employees or cut off their welfare to lower costs. Thus, rational employees ask for higher wage premiums to hedge the risk of being fired or receiving pay cuts. To pay lower wage premiums, firms tend to keep lower debt ratios to alleviate employees’ concerns.However, with the improvement of labor protection, they would increase debt ratios to capture a larger share of the tax benefit of debt. Consequently, the increase in debt increases the default risk. In general, theoretically, labor protection may increase the likelihood of default. However, the channel through which labor protection affects default risk still requires empirical examination.In this paper, we use the Social Insurance Law issued in 2011 as an exogenous shock to investigate the relationship between labor protection and corporate default risk. We use the Social Insurance Law as the exogenous shock for two reasons. First, the issue of the Social Insurance Law is exogenous for listed firms in China. Furthermore, it requires firms to pay five social insurances for employees. Thus, social insurance fees paid by corporations can be regarded as quasi-tax payments, ensuring that the cost of social insurance is constantly reflected

关 键 词：劳动保护 社会保险法 劳动成本 企业债务违约风险 

分 类 号：D922.182.3[政治法律—宪法学与行政法学]