IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eme/cfripp/cfri-02-2020-0013.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Economic policy uncertainty and firms' labor investment decision

Author

Listed:
  • Jian Chu
  • Junxiong Fang

Abstract

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the impact of economic policy uncertainty on firms' labor investment decision, which includes labor investment level and efficiency, especially human capital allocation. Design/methodology/approach - This paper uses Economic Policy Uncertainty Index for China and Chinese A-share listed firms in the period 2002–2016 to constructs a sample of 20,779 firm-year observations and applies the methods of pooled OLS regressions to do an empirical study. Findings - This paper finds that firms' labor investment is negatively correlated with economic policy uncertainty. And firms' labor investment efficiency (and overinvestment in labor) is positively (negatively) correlated with economic policy uncertainty, which is more significant for non-SOEs and firms with less government intervention. Further, the positive relation between economic policy uncertainty and labor investment efficiency is more significant for labor-intensive firms, firms in competitive industry, firms in developed labor market and firms under strong labor law protection. In addition, economic policy uncertainty induces firms to make adjustment on human capital structure and allocate more employees with high human capital, which eventually helps firms achieve higher total factor productivity. Social implications - The study of this paper indicates that the government needs to consider economic policies' impact on firms when introducing and changing policies and guide firms to improve human capital allocation under different internal and external conditions to finally realize the optimal allocation of social resources. Originality/value - This paper studies the influence of external economic policy environment on firms' labor investment decision, which lacks adequate attention in the literature and indicates that under economic policy uncertainty, firms actively decrease labor demand and increase labor investment efficiency by optimizing human capital allocation.

Suggested Citation

  • Jian Chu & Junxiong Fang, 2020. "Economic policy uncertainty and firms' labor investment decision," China Finance Review International, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 11(1), pages 73-91, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:eme:cfripp:cfri-02-2020-0013
    DOI: 10.1108/CFRI-02-2020-0013
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/CFRI-02-2020-0013/full/html?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/CFRI-02-2020-0013/full/pdf?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1108/CFRI-02-2020-0013?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wang, Maolin & Lin, Huiting & Huang, Yehua & Lu, Huiyan, 2023. "Poverty alleviation and firm productivity: Evidence from China's minimum wage system," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    2. Wang, Li & Dai, Yunhao & Kong, Dongmin, 2021. "Air pollution and employee treatment," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    3. Huang, Zhi-xiong & Li, Xiaozhong & Zhao, Yuheng, 2022. "Stock pledge restrictions and investment efficiency," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 48(C).
    4. Ling Zhu & Dongmin Kong, 2023. "Revenue pressure of local governments and firm productivity: Evidence from a natural experiment in China," Economics of Transition and Institutional Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 31(3), pages 721-748, July.
    5. Wang, Xinyi & Zhu, Ling & Ji, Mianmian, 2022. "One-site reform of public service and corporate investment," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 48(C).
    6. Peng, Dan & Ji, Y. & Kong, Qunxi, 2023. "OFDI and firms' sustainable productive capacity: Evidence from Chinese industrial firms," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 641-652.
    7. Muhammad Nadir Shabbir & Muhammad Usman Arshad & Muhammad Amir Alvi & Kainat Iftikhar, 2022. "Impact of Trade Policy Uncertainty and Sustainable Development on Medical Innovation for Developed Countries: An Application of DID Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(1), pages 1-26, December.
    8. He, Ye & Hu, Weiping & Li, Kunwang & Zhang, Xiao, 2022. "Can real options explain the impact of uncertainty on Chinese corporate investment?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    9. Zeng, Qing & Lu, Xinjie & Dong, Dayong & Li, Pan, 2022. "Category-specific EPU indices, macroeconomic variables and stock market return predictability," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    10. Xie, Yutang & Cao, Yujia & Li, Xiaotao, 2023. "The importance of trade policy uncertainty to energy consumption in a changing world," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    11. Yan, Jiajia & Zhang, Chenyan, 2024. "Financial institution agglomeration and corporate labor allocation efficiency—Based on the context of government debt expansion," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    12. Zhang, Jiaming & Zou, Yang & Xiang, Yitian & Guo, Songlin, 2023. "Climate change and Japanese economic policy uncertainty: Asymmetric analysis," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 56(C).
    13. Hoang, Dung Phuong & Chu, Lan Khanh & To, Trung Thanh, 2023. "How do economic policy uncertainty, geopolitical risk, and natural resources rents affect economic complexity? Evidence from advanced and emerging market economies," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 85(PA).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Economic policy uncertainty; Labor investment; Labor investment efficiency; Human capital allocation; G31; G38; M51;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G31 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Capital Budgeting; Fixed Investment and Inventory Studies
    • G38 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • M51 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Firm Employment Decisions; Promotions

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eme:cfripp:cfri-02-2020-0013. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Emerald Support (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.