EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Business environment trustworthiness and employee income share

Min Bai, Yue Li and Yu, Chia-Feng (Jeffrey)

International Review of Financial Analysis, 2025, vol. 103, issue C

Abstract: Using China's social credit pilot program as a quasi-natural experiment and a sample of listed firms from 2011 to 2019, we provide robust evidence that employee income share rises as business environment trustworthiness improves. Notably, this increase is primarily driven by rank-and-file employees rather than executives. The mechanisms behind this trend include enhanced talent agglomeration, reduced agency problems, and eased financing constraints. The effect is more pronounced for firms facing greater competition, weaker corporate governance, poorer information environments, or located in less marketized regions. Further, the rise in employee income share positively impacts firms' future financial performance. These findings indicate that in a more trustworthy marketplace, where more customers and investors are likely to engage, firms—particularly those struggling to attract customers and investors—place greater value on rank-and-file employees and increase their income share. This behavior fosters employee reciprocity, leading to improved firm performance.

Keywords: Trust; Business environment; Income share; Rank-and-file employee (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G30 G38 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521925002881
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:finana:v:103:y:2025:i:c:s1057521925002881

DOI: 10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104201

Access Statistics for this article

International Review of Financial Analysis is currently edited by B.M. Lucey

More articles in International Review of Financial Analysis from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-05-20
Handle: RePEc:eee:finana:v:103:y:2025:i:c:s1057521925002881