Summary:
In 2010, China promulgated the Outline of the National Medium-and Long-term Talent Development Plan (2010-2020). In response to the call of the plan, local governments have issued policies to introduce local talent according to the talent development plan. Against this background, this paper investigates how local talent introduction policies affect the human capital level and talent incentive methods of local companies from the perspective of micro companies. The theoretical basis of this paper is that local talent introduction policies provide material incentives such as talent introduction bonuses, housing subsidies, and housing allocation, as well as spiritual incentives such as preferential medical treatment, preferential treatment of children's education, and high-ranking positions. Thus, it reduces the cost of introducing talent for local companies, guarantees the legitimacy of introducing talent, and sends a signal to the market that the government attaches importance to the development of companies. Therefore, in theory, local talent introduction policies should improve the human capital level of local companies. At the same time, these policies promote competition in the talent market, and competitive pressure may lead a company's older employees to resist the promotion of these policies. To appease these employees, the company has an incentive to relax their performance appraisal in exchange for promoting talent introduction policies. Therefore, local talent introduction policies may weaken companies' incentive mechanisms. We collect the specific time of promulgation and content of the talent introduction policies in each city from city government official websites, Human Resources and Social Security Bureau official websites, and relevant talent policy news. We take the promulgation of talent policies in each city as the quasi-natural experiment and Chinese A-share companies from 2011 to 2018 as the research object. We used the staggered difference-in-differences model to investigate the impact of local talent introduction policies on human capital and the incentive mechanism of local companies. The results show that local talent introduction policies significantly improve the human capital level of local companies. Moreover, to promote these policies, companies appease their older employees in relation to policy implementation by weakening their incentive mechanisms, resulting in some efficiency loss in the compensation governance of these companies. In general, however, local talent introduction policies improve the human capital level and production efficiency of companies. The policy suggestions put forward in this paper are as follows. First, local governments in economically underdeveloped areas should increase the introduction of talent, actively respond to the talent-strong country strategy, narrow the economic gap with developed areas and step forward to the goal of common prosperity. Second, local governments should implement talent introduction policies according to the different characteristics of different industries. Third, governments and companies should jointly formulate specific plans and governance countermeasures for gradually implementing talent policies, establish a talent quality evaluation system before talent introduction and a supervision system after talent introduction, and urge companies to establish specific countermeasures to appease their older employees. Fourth, talent policies should not be implemented using a “one-size-fits-all” approach, but the double-track incentive system of “old way for the old, new system for the new” should be considered. In the follow-up implementation of these policies, companies should adhere to the 14th Five-Year Plan and the spiritual guidance of the 2021 Central Talent Work Conference, persist in deepening the reform of the talent development system, and improve the market-oriented compensation distribution mechanism. The main innovation of this paper is to take the exogenous impact of local talent introduction policies as a quasi-natural experiment by using unique data on talent policies and the differential method to verify the micro mechanism of talent policies affecting economic development. The main contributions of this paper are that it verifies the effectiveness of local talent introduction policies, provides supporting evidence that implementing these policies assist in developing a quality workforce, and points out the shortcomings in the implementation of local talent policies, providing a policy reference for local governments to improve the implementation of such talent policies. At the same time, by examining how talent introduction policies affect companies' human capital, this paper reveals the mechanism through which macro talent policies affect micro corporate behavior.
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