IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/chinae/v29y2021i5p105-126.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Did the Labor Contract Law Affect the Capital Deepening and Efficiency of Chinese Private Firms?

Author

Listed:
  • Jian Ding
  • Yixiao Zhou

Abstract

Since the implementation of the Labor Contract Law (LCL) in 2010, a significant increase in the capital/labor ratio, known as capital deepening, has occurred in private firms in China. However, the cause and impact of the capital deepening is still in question, as either technological change or a higher cost of labor might cause it. Using data from the Chinese Private Enterprise Survey in 2008 and 2012, two critical findings are reported in this study. First, pension coverage significantly affected the capital/labor ratio in private firms after 2010. Second, large private firms are able to generate higher total factor productivity after the implementation of the LCL because they can adjust their production function more easily than smaller competitors. These findings have policy implications for reforms in the Chinese labor market.

Suggested Citation

  • Jian Ding & Yixiao Zhou, 2021. "Did the Labor Contract Law Affect the Capital Deepening and Efficiency of Chinese Private Firms?," China & World Economy, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, vol. 29(5), pages 105-126, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:chinae:v:29:y:2021:i:5:p:105-126
    DOI: 10.1111/cwe.12388
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/cwe.12388
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/cwe.12388?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andrea Bassanini & Luca Nunziata & Danielle Venn, 2009. "Job protection legislation and productivity growth in OECD countries [Appropriate growth policy: a unifying framework]," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 24(58), pages 349-402.
    2. Raurich, Xavier & Sala, Hector & Sorolla, Valeri, 2012. "Factor shares, the price markup, and the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 181-198.
    3. Xin Meng, 2017. "The Labor Contract Law, Macro Conditions, Self-Selection, and Labor Market Outcomes for Migrants in China," Asian Economic Policy Review, Japan Center for Economic Research, vol. 12(1), pages 45-65, January.
    4. Hijzen, Alexander & Mondauto, Leopoldo & Scarpetta, Stefano, 2017. "The impact of employment protection on temporary employment: Evidence from a regression discontinuity design," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 64-76.
    5. Bentolila Samuel & Saint-Paul Gilles, 2003. "Explaining Movements in the Labor Share," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 3(1), pages 1-33, October.
    6. Federico Cingano & Marco Leonardi & Julián Messina & Giovanni Pica, 2016. "Employment Protection Legislation, Capital Investment and Access to Credit: Evidence from Italy," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 126(595), pages 1798-1822, September.
    7. David H. Autor & William R. Kerr & Adriana D. Kugler, 2007. "Do Employment Protections Reduce Productivity? Evidence from U.S. States," NBER Working Papers 12860, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Alfonso Arpaia & Esther Pérez & Karl Pichelmann, 2009. "Understanding Labour Income Share Dynamics in Europe," European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 379, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    9. Bjuggren, Carl Magnus, 2018. "Employment protection and labor productivity," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 138-157.
    10. Gao, Qin & Yang, Sui & Li, Shi, 2012. "Labor contracts and social insurance participation among migrant workers in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 23(4), pages 1195-1205.
    11. Hasan, Rana & Mitra, Devashish & Sundaram, Asha, 2013. "The Determinants of Capital Intensity in Manufacturing: The Role of Factor Market Imperfections," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 91-103.
    12. Bottasso, Anna & Conti, Maurizio & Sulis, Giovanni, 2017. "Firm dynamics and employment protection: Evidence from sectoral data," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 35-53.
    13. Cheung, Steven N S, 1974. "A Theory of Price Control," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 17(1), pages 53-71, April.
    14. Ran Li & Jiao Wang, 2015. "A structural investigation of the Chinese economy with a hybrid monetary policy rule," CAMA Working Papers 2015-10, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    15. Douglas Staiger & James H. Stock, 1997. "Instrumental Variables Regression with Weak Instruments," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(3), pages 557-586, May.
    16. Liang, Zhe & Appleton, Simon & Song, Lina, 2016. "Informal Employment in China: Trends, Patterns and Determinants of Entry," IZA Discussion Papers 10139, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    17. Winfried Koeniger & Marco Leonardi, 2007. "Capital deepening and wage differentials: Germany versus US [‘Technical change, inequality, and the labor market’]," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 22(49), pages 72-116.
    18. Cui, Chenyu & John, Kose & Pang, Jiaren & Wu, Haibin, 2018. "Employment protection and corporate cash holdings: Evidence from China's labor contract law," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 182-194.
    19. David H. Autor & William R. Kerr & Adriana D. Kugler, 2007. "Does Employment Protection Reduce Productivity? Evidence From US States," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(521), pages 189-217, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wei, Zhihua & Ren, Zerong & Zhu, Caiyun & Zhou, Yisihong & Liu, Xiaowen, 2023. "Minimum wage effects on firms’ R&D investment: Evidence from China," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 287-305.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bratti, Massimiliano & Conti, Maurizio & Sulis, Giovanni, 2019. "Employment Protection and Firm-Provided Training: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from a Labour Market Reform," IZA Discussion Papers 12773, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Bratti, Massimiliano & Conti, Maurizio & Sulis, Giovanni, 2021. "Employment protection and firm-provided training in dual labour markets," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    3. Maria De Paola & Roberto Nisticò & Vincenzo Scoppa, 2020. "Fertility Decisions And Employment Protection: The Unintended Consequences Of The Italian Jobs Act," Working Papers 202003, Università della Calabria, Dipartimento di Economia, Statistica e Finanza "Giovanni Anania" - DESF.
    4. Marco Bee & Julien Hambuckers, 2020. "Modeling multivariate operational losses via copula-based distributions with g-and-h marginals," DEM Working Papers 2020/3, Department of Economics and Management.
    5. Igor Fedotenkov & Virmantas Kvedaras & Miguel Sanchez-Martinez, 2024. "Employment protection and labour productivity growth in the EU: skill-specific effects during and after the Great Recession," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 51(1), pages 209-262, February.
    6. Conti, Maurizio & Sulis, Giovanni, 2016. "Human capital, employment protection and growth in Europe," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 213-230.
    7. Gnocato, Nicolò & Modena, Francesca & Tomasi, Chiara, 2020. "Labor market reforms and allocative efficiency in Italy," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    8. Giuseppina Gianfreda & Giovanna Vallanti, 2017. "Informality and productivity: do firms escape EPL through shadow employment? Evidence from a regression discontinuity design," Working Papers 2017-01, Universita' di Cassino, Dipartimento di Economia e Giurisprudenza.
    9. Etienne Wasmer & Alexandre Janiak, 2014. "Employment protection and capital-labor ratios," Sciences Po Economics Discussion Papers 2014-11, Sciences Po Departement of Economics.
    10. Bratti, Massimiliano & Conti, Maurizio & Sulis, Giovanni, 2018. "Employment Protection, Temporary Contracts and Firm-Provided Training: Evidence from Italy," IZA Discussion Papers 11339, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Karpuz, Ahmet & Kim, Kirak & Ozkan, Neslihan, 2020. "Employment protection laws and corporate cash holdings," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    12. Alpysbayeva, Dinara & Vanormelingen, Stijn, 2022. "Labor market rigidities and misallocation: Evidence from a natural experiment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    13. Giovanna Vallanti & Giuseppina Gianfreda, 2021. "Informality, regulation and productivity: do small firms escape EPL through shadow employment?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 57(3), pages 1383-1412, October.
    14. Andrea Bassanini & Thomas Manfredi, 2014. "Capital’s grabbing hand? A cross-industry analysis of the decline of the labor share in OECD countries," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 4(1), pages 3-30, June.
    15. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/3aom2mve1k829p8sp4h3vrpgkg is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Giuseppina Gianfreda & Giovanna Vallanti, 2017. "Informality and productivity: do firms escape EPL through shadow employment? Evidence from a regression discontinuity design," Working Papers 2017-01, Universita' di Cassino, Dipartimento di Economia e Giurisprudenza.
    17. Alexandre Janiak & Etienne Wasmer, 2014. "Employment protection and capital-labor ratios," SciencePo Working papers hal-03460272, HAL.
    18. García-Vega, María & Kneller, Richard & Stiebale, Joel, 2021. "Labor market reform and innovation: Evidence from Spain," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(5).
    19. Alexandre Janiak & Etienne Wasmer, 2014. "Employment protection and capital-labor ratios," Working Papers hal-01061024, HAL.
    20. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/2a53rsm0o89kn9vjs4dhjqnvn5 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/2ennjqtovk8lvprrqlro5ni69v is not listed on IDEAS
    22. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/2ennjqtovk8lvprrqlro5ni69v is not listed on IDEAS
    23. Geran Tian & Weixing Wu, 2022. "Employment protection, production flexibility and corporate capital spending," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(1), pages 1-23, March.
    24. Bjuggren, Carl Magnus, 2018. "Employment protection and labor productivity," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 138-157.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:chinae:v:29:y:2021:i:5:p:105-126. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iwepacn.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.