摘要
虽然企业高管与普通员工的收入差距已经受到广泛关注,但企业内部的收入差距如何影响企业创新,仍未见到相关探讨。正是在这一背景下,本文利用中国上市公司数据,考察企业管理层与员工之间的薪酬差距对企业创新的影响。我们发现:第一,整体而言,研究结果支持锦标赛理论,即薪酬差距对创新产出存在正向影响。为了控制内生性,我们基于个人所得税率与最低工资标准调整构造工具变量,结论一致。第二,在薪酬差距水平较低的情况下,扩大薪酬差距显著提升了企业创新,表明锦标赛理论在创新活动中占主导;但在薪酬差距水平较高的情况下,扩大薪酬差距对企业创新有负向作用,表明比较理论开始呈现作用。第三,薪酬差距对创新的正向激励作用主要由管理层薪酬溢价驱动,员工薪酬溢价反而在一定程度上降低了创新产出。本文为监管和企业部门提供了重要的视角,本文的结论对政府出台激励企业创新的政策有重要参考意义。
Summary： The pay gap between executives and employees has been widely discussed and has recently received great attention from regulators around the world. Although emerging literature explores the effects of the pay gap on firm behaviors and performances, few studies investigate how the intra-firm pay gap affects firm innovation. Considering the significant role of innovation in economic growth and social development, it is of great importance for academia and policy implications to evaluate how the pay gap influences innovation and to discuss its underlying mechanism. Both management and employees participate in a firm operating process. However, they have different responsibilities in the process of innovation. Studies show that a firm＇s various characteristics affect managerial or employee incentives to participate in innovation activities. For instance, managers＇ innovation incentives are motivated by institutional ownership, venture capital, tolerance for failure, and analyst coverage. Meanwhile, employees＇ incentives are important for innovation. Two competing theories are potentially related to the consequences of the pay gap. The tournament theory （ Lazear and Rosen, 1981 ） proposes that firms motivate employees by setting up a hierarchy of compensation. Payment at a given level of the organizational hierarchy induces efforts from employees at both their own level and the next lower hierarchical level. In contrast, comparison theories are widely used in organizational research to explain individuals＇ reactions to pay. Individuals expect rewards to be distributed proportionally to their contribution and evaluate themselves （ the equity of their exchange relationships with their firms） in comparison with reference groups. If their input-outcome ratios are lower than those of the reference groups, the feelings of inequity or deprivation will be stronger. By constructing the variable of the pay gap between management groups and employees, this paper combines managerial and employee incentives, and investigates the effect of the compensation system on innovation in a comprehensive way. We measure firm innovation using patent applications. In the baseline tests, we construct a linear model of the pay gap and innovation, and find a positive relationship between them. To identify the causality, we introduce two instrument variables to address the possible endogeneity： the change in the after-tax pay gap caused by individual income tax rate adjustment and the provincial minimum wage. Both instrument variable regressions provide results consistent with the baseline results. To further investigate the source of innovation incentives, we decompose the firm pay gap into three components： management pay premium, employee pay premium, and industrial pay gap. Results show that the positive effect of the firm pay gap on innovation is driven by management pay premium, that employee pay premium reduces innovation quantity, and that the negative effect is more pronounced in firms with lower human capital and in non-SOEs. We contribute to the literature in three ways. First, we examine the effect of the intra-firm pay dispersion on innovation in a transitional economy, thus complement the emerging literature focusing on the determinants of firm innovation. Second, we explore the possible underlying mechanism of how the pay gap affects firm innovation output. The decomposition of the pay gap helps us understand the different roles of management and ordinary employees in innovation activities. Third, our conclusions have clear implications for the trade-off between justice and efficiency for both government and business sectors. Our findings indicate that a relatively large pay gap within a firm promotes firm innovation, which is consistent with the tournament theory. However, we cannot rule out the possible negative effect suggested by comparison theories, as our evidence only reflects the ＂net＂ effect. In fact, the pay gap may play both a positive and a negative role in motivating firm innovation, but the latter is dominated by the former.
作者
孔东民
徐茗丽
孔高文
KONG Dongmin XU Mingli KONG Gaowen(Huazhong University of Science and Technology Zhongnan University of Economics and Law South China Normal University Guangzhou University)
出处
《经济研究》
CSSCI
北大核心
2017年第10期144-157,共14页
Economic Research Journal
基金
国家自然科学基金项目(71772178
71372130)
中央组织部"万人计划"青年拔尖人才计划的资助
