Product Market Competition, Competitive Position and Employee Wage

Abstract

Although executives and workers all are the enterprise value creators, most research has focused on the study of executive compensation, and the wages of employees are less. Especially, there is little literature to study the salary problem of employees in product market competition environment. Using a sample of China’s listed firms from 2002 to 2014, we examine how product market competition influences firm worker’s pay. We find that market competition will strengthen employee wage, which results from market competition augment firm’s labor demand. At the same time we also find that the higher the competitive position of enterprises in the industry, the higher the wages. The evidence has an important implication for research on product market competition and corporate behavior and provides some useful suggestions for policy makers.