Downward Wage Rigidity and Corporate Investment
研究发现，当企业面临工资向下刚性时，会减少投资。利用美国各州最低工资法变化作为外生冲击，最低工资每提高一个标准差，企业投资率下降3.08个百分点，且对依赖最低工资工人、劳动保护强或劳动密集型企业影响更大。
Firms reduce investment when facing downward wage rigidity, the inability or unwillingness to adjust wages downward. To document this behavior, I exploit staggered state-level changes in minimum wage laws as an exogenous variation in downward wage rigidity. Following a 1-standard-deviation increase in the minimum wage, firms reduce their investment rate (the ratio of capital expenditure to capital stock) by 3.08 percentage points. The negative impact is more acute for firms with a higher fraction of minimum wage workers, stronger employment protections, or higher labor intensity. The investment reductions cannot be explained by labor adjustment under capital-labor complementarities. Rather, I identify the aggravation of debt overhang and increased operating leverage crowding out debt financing as two mechanisms by which downward wage rigidity impedes investment. The findings highlight the unintended consequences of minimum wage policies on corporate investment.