Employment Protection and Venture Capital Investment: The Impact of Wrongful Discharge Laws
中文摘要
不当解雇法(WDLs)对随意雇佣原则施加了限制,从而削弱经营灵活性,使解雇员工的成本上升,进而推高预期财务困境成本。这种削弱对初创企业不利,导致风险投资(VC)投资下降。利用美国各州交错(分批)采纳不当解雇法所形成的双重差分框架,我们发现,某州采纳善意例外(WDL 中最强的形式)之后,VC 投资出现下降。这一下降在劳动力依赖度高的行业中最为明显。
Abstract
Wrongful discharge laws (WDLs) provide limits to the employment-at-will doctrine, and thus impair operating flexibility, increasing expected financial distress costs by making it costly to fire employees. This impairment is detrimental to start-ups, leading to a decline in venture capital (VC) investment. Using a difference-in-differences framework enabled by the staggered adoption of WDLs across the U.S. states, we show VC investment declines after a state adopts the good faith exception (the strongest form of WDL). This decline is most pronounced in sectors with high labor dependency.