Social Supervision and the Social Insurance Payment of Firms: Evidence from the Pilot of Social Insurance Supervision

Social insurance is regarded as an important part of modern social security system, as it protects human well-being. At the same time, it also incurs a heavy cost for enterprises, influencing business profitability. The relationships between social protection and firms’ performance is extensively debated in the literature, however, there are still gaps regarding its place in developing economies. Therefore, it is of particular importance to study the risk control of social endowment insurance under such a background. The empirical results demonstrate that the social insurance contributions burden decreases the degree of earnings management influencing the level of free cash flow. It is shown that the local tax bureau provides higher efficiency than the collecting system, while being under the dual collecting system. The rates and bases of endowment insurance are related to the intensity of local endowment insurance collection, so the reduction of fees can influence the interest of local governments for collection. Finally, it is worth mentioning that although great contributions to supervision and stability were made, but significant challenges for further theoretical and practical issues still remain.