Human capital and firms’ markup: evidence from China

Wen Yue

Journal of Applied Economics, 2022, vol. 25, issue 1, 878-906

Abstract: Based on the university enrollment expansion policy implemented by the Chinese government in 1999, I use the difference-in-difference method to explore the effects of human capital expansion on firms’ markup and the influencing mechanism. Findings suggest that human capital expansion significantly promotes the improvement of firms’ markup, which remains true after a series of robustness tests. The analysis of the influencing mechanism shows that on the one hand, human capital expansion promotes the improvement of firms’ production efficiency and improves their markup through the production efficiency channel. On the other hand, human capital expansion improves the market pricing power of firms and exerts a significant positive impact on their markup through the market pricing channel. Further analysis also shows the varying impacts of human capital expansion on the markup of different types of firms. This study enhances the understanding of the microeconomic effects of human capital expansion from the markup perspective.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/15140326.2022.2072675 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:recsxx:v:25:y:2022:i:1:p:878-906

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/recs20

DOI: 10.1080/15140326.2022.2072675

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Applied Economics is currently edited by Jorge M. Streb

More articles in Journal of Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().