| The report of the Nineteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposed that "We should pursue supply-side structural reform as our main task,and work hard for better quality,higher efficiency,and more robust drivers of economic growth through reform,which means we need to raise total factor productivity(TFP)."However,the high pension contribution rate has always brought Chinese enterprises.The heavy burden has an adverse effect on stimulating the vitality of the enterprise and improving the production efficiency of the enterprise.In order to reduce the tax burden of enterprises and stimulate the vitality of business entities,since 2016,the Chinese government has twice lowered the statutory pension contribution rate.In 2019,it has significantly reduced the pension contribution rate from 19%to 16%.Compared with developed countries,China's endowment insurance rate is still under downward pressure.However,only by understanding the impact of the contribution rate of pension insurance on TFP and the transmission mechanism can we make targeted policies to allow pension insurance fee reduction policy to release more "productivity dividends".Based on the theory of endogenous growth theory and efficiency wage theory,this paper uses the R&D expenditure selection model and labor market equilibrium model to find the internal relationship between pension insurance contributions and TFP.And then,we conduct an empirical test on the impact of pension contribution rate on total factor production and its transmission mechanism,which take effect through R&D expenditure and employee income.First,the CSMAR and WIND database were used to select a sample of A-share listed companies in the non-tertiary industry from 2008 to 2018 to construct a fixed-effect model,meanwhile,the legal contribution rate was selected as an instrumental variable to improve the exogenousness of the model.Secondly,we using R&D expenditure and employee income as intermediary variables,construct a mediation effect model.The estimation results show that pension contributions will bring down the increase in TFP.Specifically,pension contributions have a negative impact on TFP by reducing corporate R&D expenditures and employee income.For every 1%increase in pension contribution rates,through R&D Expenditure intermediation results in a reduction of TFP by 0.137%;through employee income intermediation causes a reduction of TFP by 0.897%.Third,on the basis of the above analysis,considering that financing constraints play an important role in the process of pension contributions affecting R&D expenditure,this paper further adds the adjustment variable of financing constraints to the mediation effect model,and verifies the negative adjustment effect of financing constraints on R&D expenditure.Finally,the analysis of the differences in enterprise ownership shows that the impact of non-state-owned enterprise pension contribution rates on TFP is significantly smaller than that of state-owned enterprises,and the impact of non-state-owned enterprise pension contributions on R&D expenditure is not significant.Based on the above conclusions,this paper puts forward policy recommendations in terms of multi-policy cooperation to release more bonuses for pension fee reduction policy,improving the management level of pension funds,support the development of enterprise annuities,and allocating state-owned capital to enrich social security funds.The innovation of this article including two aspects.One is that we constructed an analysis framework for the contribution rate of pension insurance to TFP,and financing constraint was included in the effect mechanism at first time.The other is that the mediation effect model with or without adjustment was used for the first time to study the transmission mechanism of the influence of pension contribution rate on TFP. |
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