企业金融化与劳动收入份额变动

本文从企业金融化的角度解释了上市公司劳动收入份额的变动,虽然基准结果显示,企业金融化能够促进劳动收入份额提升,但基于欧拉方程分解和中介变量法的验证发现,企业金融化一方面对工资水平产生正向溢出并提升了劳动收入份额,即表现出“盈利溢出”效应;另一方面,企业金融化却会抑制企业劳动生产率的改进,客观上造成劳动要素在生产中的地位上升进而带来劳动收入份额的提升,即表现出“技术抑制”效应。进一步分析发现,高管的劳动收入份额获益幅度小于普通员工(私营企业中更明显),说明经典的“委托-代理”框架并不能有效地解释中国企业的金融化行为;与此同时,企业金融化的影响和金融市场收益率具有强相关性,表明企业金融化的动力来自金融市场的收益激励。本文研究结论表明,企业金融化是企业在金融市场超额收益时期的“理性选择”,伴随金融市场回归并运行在合理区间,企业金融化对劳动收入份额的提升作用不仅不可持续,而且会对劳动生产率产生持续损害,借助趋利性的企业金融化来获得劳动收入份额的提升无异于“饮鸩止渴”。本文的研究结论可为我国进一步深化金融体系供给侧结构性改革,引导金融回归本源,更好地服务于实体经济提供有益参考。

Financialization and Labor Share:Firm-level Evidence from China

Globally, the last four decades have been characterized by a continuous decline in the labor income share, which has attracted the attention of many scholars. However, using a sample of China's listed firms, we observe that China's labor income share did not decline significantly after the 2008 financial crisis and even showed an upward trend. We also observe surges in the rapid deepening of the financialization of nonfinancial firms in China during the same period. Intuitively, we find a positive link between firms' financialization and labor income share after the crisis. This raises the question of whether the newly emerging and rapidly spreading financialization of firms in China may be an important reason for the growth of labor income share after 2010. If so, what is the mechanism？ Is it sustainable？ These are the questions we try to answer.Using a sample of China's listed firms from the 2007 to 2017 period, we investigate the relationship between the financialization of Chinese listed firms and their labor income share. We find that the financialization of Chinese listed firms has a positive effect on their labor share, which is inconsistent with the findings of a negative correlation between the two in studies using samples of firms in developed countries.We argue that the spillover effect of financialization on workers' wages and its inhibition of productivity is the explanation for our results. The results of our mediation analysis are as follows. Financialization has a positive spillover on employees' income (i.e., the profit spillover effect); however, it also inhibits labor productivity (i.e., the technology inhibitory effect). These two channels can help explain the positive relationship between financialization and labor share in China. Our analysis of heterogeneous samples shows that the positive effect of firms' financialization on labor share is especially dominant among firms from areas with higher minimum wage and more skilled workers. Further analysis finds that the classic principal-agent framework fails to explain financialization in China. Instead, the role of financialization in promoting labor share stems from the excess returns in China's financial market. Financialization is a rational choice for firms when there are excess returns in the financial market, but it also damages productivity. Therefore, the positive relationship between financialization and labor share is unsustainable. In the long run, profit-oriented financialization in China may not only damage the actual income of workers but also damage the industrial foundation, and thus it may be referred to as a “sweet poison.” We make three contributions to the literature. First, we extend the research on the relationship between financialization and labor income share to the micro level. Unlike others who have used samples of firms from developed countries, we, focusing on China, propose and identify a “profit spillover” effect and a “technology inhibition” effect of firms' financialization on labor income share. Second, previous studies of firms' financialization have paid insufficient attention to endogeneity problems. In this paper, we try to overcome this problem by using the frontier synthetic instrumental variable method and the event method to confirm the causal relationship between the financialization of firms and labor share. Third, breaking out of the classic principal-agent framework, we identify “another style” of firms financialization, which occurs when there are excess returns in the financial field. This insight not only helps to improve the understanding of firms' financialization but also has important practical value. We conclude that the pulling effect of firms' financialization on China's labor income share is based on the specific condition of excess returns, so it is not only unsustainable, but it may also result in long-term damage. Thus, the economic trend “from the real to the virtual” caused by the rapid development of firms' financialization must be guarded against..