Urban vibrancy, human capital and firm valuation in China

Abstract

PurposeThis paper intends to study how geographic heterogeneity in urban vibrancy, especially in human capital creation, helps explain persist firm valuation dispersion across cities in China.Design/methodology/approachThis paper studies geographic differences in firm valuations of 1,023 listed companies headquartered in 35 major cities in China from 2001 to 2018. The authors estimate panel regressions of local firm Tobin's q on city fixed effects or city endowed attributes in human capital creation after controlling industry-year fixed effects as well as a set of firm and city time variant attributes.FindingsThe results show persistent, significant city-to-city differences in Tobin's q, especially among large, mature or high labor-intensive firms. To explain such geographic differences in firm valuations, the authors identify several factors of the endowed city competitive advantages in creating human capital that play important roles in explaining the persistent geographic firm valuation premia.Originality/valueThis paper provides the first systematic analysis of urban vibrancy in human capital supply in explaining persistent geographic firm valuation dispersion in China. The evidence suggests that city endowed comparative advantages in supplying human capital have created long-lasting, and growing, shareholder wealth by attracting and retaining talents and human resources in local firms.

Revenue pressure of local governments and firm productivity: Evidence from a natural experiment in China

“…In this section, we provide additional evidence to explore the potential mechanisms by examining how local governments' fiscal stress affects capital inputs, employment, and capital‐labour substitution (Geng et al., 2022; Jiang et al., 2022). Table 4 reports the results.…”

“…In this section, we provide additional evidence to explore the potential mechanisms by examining how local governments' fiscal stress affects capital inputs, employment, and capital-labour substitution (Geng et al, 2022;Jiang et al, 2022). Table 4 reports Local firms increase capital and employment and adopt a higher capital-to-labour ratio for a higher TFP in response to the local governments' fiscal squeeze.…”

COVID-19 pandemic, limited attention, and analyst forecast dispersion

“…We obtain earnings forecasts issued by sell-side analysts and the basic information of brokers and analysts from the China Stock Market & Accounting Research (CSMAR). To identify the locations of analysts, we follow Jiang et al (2016), Ho and Wu (2021) , and Jiang et al (2022) , and use the provinces where analysts’ branch offices locate as their locations. The historical information on middle- and high-risk areas are manually collected from the website of the State Council of China.…”