Does Housing Provident Fund Contribution Rates Affect Firm Productivity

The role of the housing provident fund as an important component of employee compensation,unlike both discretionary take-home pay and forward earnings such as pension insurance,has been controversial.Especially in the period of economic fluctuation,the topic of whether the provident fund should be cancelled,has aroused widespread discussion.However,the impact of the housing provident fund on microenterprises has not been paid attention by the academic community.Most of the existing literature focuses on the impact of the housing provident fund system from the perspective of regions and individuals.However,what role the housing provident fund plays in enterprises is still a black box.Therefore,this paper intends to carry out an empirical test on the relationship between the contribution ratio of housing provident fund and the efficiency of enterprises,in order to fill the gap in the existing literature and provide scientific evidence for the current dispute about housing provident fund.This paper takes A-share listed companies from 2008 to 2020 as the research sample,and finds that:(1)the contribution ratio of provident fund can promote the total factor productivity of enterprises;(2)The improvement of employees’ ability to purchase houses will strengthen the positive correlation between the contribution ratio of provident fund and enterprise productivity,while the improvement of the threshold of individual income tax and the rise of regional financial development level will weaken the positive correlation between the contribution ratio of provident fund and enterprise productivity;(3)Too high contribution ratio of provident fund will lead to the decline of marginal income brought by it;(4)From the perspective of employees,enhancing the efforts of employees and optimizing the structure of employees are the channels to increase the total factor productivity of enterprises through the contribution ratio of provident fund;(5)From the perspective of enterprises,forcing enterprises to increase R&D investment is the channel to increase the total factor productivity of enterprises through the contribution ratio of provident fund.The innovation of this paper is reflected in:(1)From the perspective of research,housing provident fund is an important part of employee compensation,and existing research has ignored its role in enterprises.This paper opens this black box from the perspective of enterprise production efficiency.(2)From the perspective of research field,this paper enriches the theoretical structure of the emerging field of "labor and finance",and brings housing accumulation fund into the research scope of labor and corporate finance.The significance of this study is as follows:(1)In theory,on the one hand,taking the production efficiency of enterprises as the research object,it has opened up the research field of the micro impact of housing provident fund;On the other hand,by studying the contribution ratio of the enterprise’s provident fund,it enriches the literature of the efficiency wage theory from the perspective of the employee salary structure,and expands the application scenario of the efficiency wage theory in Chinese enterprises;At the same time,the theoretical analysis framework of the incentive of housing provident fund to enterprise human resources is built.(2)In practice,on the one hand,it can provide empirical reference for the cost management and human resource incentive of enterprises;On the other hand,it can provide a large sample of scientific research evidence for the current debate on whether the public accumulation fund needs to be cancelled.