Improving or Disappearing: Firm-Level Adjustments to Minimum Wages in China

We here consider how Chinese firms react to higher minimum wages, exploiting the 2004 minimum-wage Reform in China. After this reform, we find that the wage costs for surviving firms that were more exposed to minimum wage hikes rose, but their employment and profitability were not affected. This came about due to significant productivity gains among surviving exposed firms. Our results are robust to pre-trend analysis and an IV strategy. However, the survival probability of firms most exposed to minimum-wage hikes fell after the Reform. Firm-level productivity gains partly came from better inventory management and greater investment in capital, at the cost of a reduction in firm-level cash flow. We show that competing explanations are unlikely. In particular, there is no evidence of lower fringe benefits compensating for higher wages, the substitution of less-paid/less-protected migrants for incumbent workers, or firm-level adjustment through higher prices instead of higher productivity. This firm-level productivity adjustment to the minimum wage might be particularly relevant for developing countries where inefficiencies are still pervasive.