Abstract:

Continuing the implementation of tax cuts and fee reductions requires not only maintaining the bottom line of ensuring people's livelihoods, but also stimulating the investment vitality of market entities. Finding a balance is the key to achieving the overall goal of ensuring stability on the six fronts and security in the six areas, as well as stabilizing the macroeconomic situation in China. This article is based on data from A–share listed companies from 2012 to 2020, and empirically studies the impact of the social security inputs on corporate investment. The results show that increasing the social security inputs have a positive promoting effect on the corporate investment to a certain extent, which remains valid after a series of robustness tests. Mechanism analysis shows that social security inputs mainly affect corporate investment by upgrading human capital structure and improving corporate reputation value. Heterogeneity analysis shows that this positive effect is more pronounced in state-owned enterprises, or in the enterprises with higher labor intensity, lower market competition and higher employee satisfaction. Threshold effect analysis shows that when the social security inputs exceed a certain scale, the promoting effect on corporate investment will significantly decrease. Furthermore, the increase in social security inputs will help increase the number of patents applied for by companies in that year, thus promoting corporate innovation, but it will also lead to the over-investment problem and reduce corporate investment efficiency. Therefore, it is imperative for enterprises to maintain social security inputs within an optimal range and adjust them accordingly to fully leverage the positive impact of social security inputs. This article can provide useful thinking for enterprises to stimulate innovation potential, and also provide policy inspiration for the government to deepen supply–side structural reform.

Key words:

social security inputs, corporate investment, corporate innovation, investment efficiency