Will the Narrowing Pay Gap in Chinese State-owned Enterprises Improve Internal Control Quality?

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of pay gap on the quality of the internal control. Using state-owned enterprises listed in China from 2012 to 2019 as samples, we find new evidence of an inverted U-shaped relationship between the pay gap and internal control quality, which includes the executives’ internal pay gap, external pay gap, and executives-employees pay gap. Furthermore, we also find that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the pay gap and the internal control quality in state-owned enterprises with commercial competition, but we don’t find similar results for the samples of state-owned enterprises with specific functions. In addition, we provide evidence that the pay gap not only has a direct impact on internal control quality but also has an indirect impact on internal control quality through agency costs. This study supplements research on internal control quality from the perspective of incentives.