Can Government Public Data Openness Promote Employee Income Within Firms? Evidence from China

Government public data openness is an important means of improving public services and facilitating data-driven economic development. Using a panel of non-financial A-share listed firms in China from 2007 to 2021, this study employs a staggered Difference-in-Differences (DID) design to examine the effect of government public data openness on employee income. The results show that public data openness significantly increases employee income and improves firm profitability. Mechanism analyses indicate that these effects operate through enhanced urban innovation capacity, greater public digital access, improved local government fiscal transparency, and accelerated enterprise digital transformation. The positive effect on employee income is more pronounced among private firms, manufacturing and service firms, young firms, and firms with executives who have overseas work experience. These findings provide new evidence on the distributional consequences of public data openness and offer policy implications for translating the economic benefits of digital development into higher employee income.