The Impact Of Employee Pension Insurance On Corporate Productivity

China’s economy has entered a new stage of development of transformation and upgrading,and the report of the 20th National Congress emphasised efforts to improve total factor productivity and to promote effective qualitative improvement and reasonable quantitative growth of the economy.In January 2022,the national pooling of basic old-age insurance for enterprise employees was launched.The 20th Tenth Report proposes to improve the national co-ordination system of basic pension insurance and develop a multi-level and multi-pillar pension insurance system.Based on this,an in-depth study of the role of employee pension insurance in influencing the productivity of enterprises will enable the formulation of relevant policies in a targeted manner to promote high-quality economic development.This paper begins with a literature review of employee pension insurance,corporate productivity and the impact of employee pension insurance on corporate productivity.Secondly,the paper analyses the measures and characteristics of employee pension insurance and firm productivity separately.Again,this paper constructs an individual fixed effects model using data from 1.455 enterprises listed on A-shares from 2012 to 2020.In this paper,robustness and endogeneity analyses are conducted based on the benchmark model.The benchmark model was analysed for heterogeneity according to the size of interest expenses,the firm’s asset turnover capacity,firm attributes and the presence or absence of R&D investment.Based on an individual fixed effects model,this paper conducts an analysis of moderating effects based on return on assets,firm asset turnover capacity,largest shareholder shareholding and financing constraints,as well as an analysis of mediating effects based on different levels of educational attainment.Finally,the paper draws regression conclusions and economic implications based on the results of the analysis.The results of the study show that:firstly,the impact of employee pension insurance on enterprise productivity shows an "inverted U-shaped" trend.Secondly,the impact of employee pension insurance on firm productivity is more sensitive and significant for firms with smaller interest payments;the effect is not significant for firms with larger interest payments.The effect of employee pension insurance on productivity is highly consistent across the sample for firms with high capital turnover;however,for companies with low capital turnover capacity,the effect of employee pension contributions on the productivity of the company is not significant.Thirdly,employee pension insurance in state-owned and private enterprises has a significant effect on the productivity of enterprises,while the effect of other enterprises is not significant.Fourth,the effect of employee pension contributions on firm productivity was significant for firms with R&D expenditures;the effect was not significant for firms without R&D expenditures.Fifth,both the return on assets and the share of the largest shareholder negatively moderate the utility of employee pension insurance in enhancing the productivity of the firm,and the financing constraint positively moderates the utility of the impact of employee pension insurance on the productivity of the firm.Based on the findings of the study,this paper makes the following recommendations.First,further optimise the policy on corporate pension insurance contributions.Second,the government should optimise the financing environment and enterprises should strengthen their capital allocation.Third,strengthen the preferential policies for private enterprises to reduce their pension insurance premiums in multiple directions.Fourth,the government should strengthen R&D subsidies and patent protection,and enterprises should strengthen R&D of key technologies and training of core talents.Fifth,enterprises further strengthen the diversification of ownership structure.