How Do Higher Educated Employees Affect Firms’ Investment Efficiency in China?

Abstract

ABSTRACT China’s higher education expansion increases firms’ human capital input in terms of the number of educated employees, while its quality undergoes questioning. It is unknown what employees with higher education bring to the firm in China. Considering that investment decision is one of the most important drivers of firm value, we examine how employees with higher education affect firms’ investment efficiency in this paper. We document that the number of employees with higher education increases by 89% from 2008 to 2021. We further find that more employees with higher education are associated with higher investment efficiency through mitigating over- and underinvestment. This association is stronger for firms with high product market competition, low customer concentration, state-owned enterprises, and high senior manager education. Collectively, the results suggest that the information inputs channel, monitoring channel and up-and-down communications channel are likely underlying mechanisms through which higher educated employees affect firms’ investment decisions. Overall, our paper sheds light on the real effect of higher educated employees on firms’ investment efficiency.