Abstract This paper takes the opening of public data platforms across diverse prefecture-level cities as a quasi-natural experiment to assess the influence of public data access on the within-firm income gap with a multi-period difference-in-differences model based on the data of A-share listed companies in China over the period 2009~2022. The research finds that access to public data significantly widens the within-firm income gap. Mechanism test shows that public data access expands within-firm income gap by enhancing managerial ability and risk compensation to increase the management salary. Further heterogeneous analyses suggest that the role of public data access in widening within-firm income gap is more pronounced in enterprises which are non-state-owned, with management teams having a digital background and those in capital- and technology-intensive industries. However, skill enhancement can bolster the bargaining power of general employees, thereby effectively mitigating the negative impact of public data access on corporate income distribution.
YANG Jing,FENG Sixian,CHEN Zhibin. Research on the Impact of Public Data Access on Within-Firm Income Gap[J]. Chinese Journal of Management, 2025, 22(6): 1022-.
