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| Labor Protection and Firm Risk: Evidence from the New Labor Contract Law |
| GAO Wenjing, SHI Xinzheng, LU Yao, WANG Jiaqi
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School of Economics, Zhejiang University; Institute for Fiscal Big-Data and Policy of Zhejiang University;
School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University;
Research Institute of Finance and Banking, the People's Bank of China |
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Abstract 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.
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Received: 20 November 2020
Published: 03 March 2022
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