Digital finance and Chinese corporate labor investment efficiency: The perspective of financing constraints and human capital structure

As the aging population problem intensifies, many emerging economies are caught in labor shortage and rising labor costs, thus improving the corporate labor investment efficiency (LIE) is crucial for these countries. In this context, we take China as an example to explore the influence of the current booming digital finance (DF) on corporate LIE. This paper, which enriches the existing literature, is one of the few studies that explores the link between macroeconomic policies and firms' LIE. Our research adopts the baseline methodology of ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, and the data comprise 23,503 observations for Chinese A-share listed businesses from 2011 to 2020. In addition, we use fixed effects regression, instrumental variables method and substitution of independent variables to deal with endogeneity and test the robustness. The outcomes suggest that DF may significantly increase corporate LIE. Further results from the path mechanism study suggest that DF could alleviate financing constraints and optimize human capital structure, both of which have a favorable effect on the LIE. Last but not least, the heterogeneity results imply that DF can more effectively encourage LIE of firms in economically underdeveloped regions and of private nature. The study recommends that emerging economies should pay attention to strengthening regulation to avoid financial risks while vigorously promoting DF. In addition, enhancing the level of human capital and optimizing human capital allocation are also essential.