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| Can M&As Promote the Optimization and Upgrading of Labor Structures？ |
| ZHAO Shuo, SHI Xinzheng, LU Yao, LIU Xinyue
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School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University;
HSBC Business School, Peking University |
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Abstract The impact of new technologies and automation on the optimization and upgrading of labor structures has received significant attention in academic circles. Studies indicate that the upgrade of production technology (including the introduction of technology and technological innovation) is closely related to changes in the labor structure (Ning and Lin, 2014; Kim et al., 2019). As the upgrade of production technology is inseparable from the demand for capital, the capital market affects the technical composition of the labor force through firms' investment and financing behaviors. At the same time, M&As are an important resource allocation activity of the capital market that receives a lot of attention from academia, industry, and government. Some studies, including Chen et al. (2015), Zhang et al. (2017), and Xian and Ming (2018), examine the relationship between M&As and technological upgrading. If M&As affect firms' technological upgrading and technological upgrading affects firms' demand for labor, how do M&As affect firms' technical labor demand？ This issue is important both for academia and for practice. However, it has not received adequate attention in the literature. This paper fills this research gap by examining the effect of M&As on the labor force.
This paper investigates the impact of M&As on target firms' labor structure upgrades. Using panel data from Chinese A-share firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges from 2000 to 2016, we find that after controlling for firm, regional, industry, and other factors as well as labor-related policies and firm and year fixed effects, M&As significantly increase the percentages of non-routine skilled and highly educated employees in firms and significantly decrease the percentages of routine skilled employees. Furthermore, we find that M&As reduce firms' financial constraints and promote production technology upgrades, thereby accelerating firms' labor technology upgrades.
Heterogeneous tests show that M&As have a stronger impact on labor technology upgrading for firms whose payment includes cash, and firms with low performance before the M&A. These findings suggest that M&As play an important role in promoting firms' technological upgrading of labor skills. Our results are robust to using instrumental variables, PSM-DID, and shortening the M&A window.
This paper makes the following contributions to the literature. First, it belongs to the interdisciplinary field of finance and labor economics, its research topic currently being a frontier in this field.
Second, the literature on M&As mainly examines their effect on “narrow stakeholders” (such as shareholders or management) and other corporate governance behaviors, whereas there is little research on how M&As affect “broad stakeholders” (such as the labor force). In addition, the literature on the effect of M&As on Chinese firms is limited to the effect of foreign M&As, and previous research on the effect of M&As on technological upgrading mainly focuses on the technological innovation of firms. Our sample includes both foreign and domestic M&As. And we find that the optimization and upgrading of the labor force structure is caused by the upgrade of production technology, and production technology upgrading includes not only technological innovation but also the purchase of advanced technology and equipment and the introduction of technology-related intangible assets (such as patents, advanced system software, etc.), which means that our sample is more comprehensive and our conclusions are more universal. Moreover, most studies on the demand for labor and technology focus on population and regional factors. This paper examines the effect of M&As on the capital market and fills a gap in the relevant literature.
Finally, as described by Cheng et al. (2019), the amount of intelligent equipment used for production in China is increasing year by year, so it is of great practical significance to study the technological upgrade of China's labor market.
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Received: 29 May 2019
Published: 02 November 2020
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