Economic policy uncertainty and firm investment decisions: Dilemma or opportunity?

In an environment of economic policy uncertainty (EPU), how to improve efficiency and optimize the scale of firm investment is an important topic worthy of attention. This paper examines the impact of EPU on firms' investment decisions, using Chinese A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2019 as a research sample. The study finds that macro EPU inhibits the increase of firms' investment scale and efficiency while exacerbating the risk of overinvestment or underinvestment. Local EPU enhances a firm's investment scale but simultaneously exacerbates the risk of over- or underinvestment, which in turn inhibits investment efficiency. The mechanism test shows that, first, macro EPU promotes firms' R&D investment but inhibits their green investment. In contrast, local EPU inhibits R&D investment and promotes green investment. Second, macro EPU has a significant negative effect on firms' business performance, while local EPU has a smaller effect. Therefore, in an uncertain environment, the government should actively stabilize the macroeconomic environment, and firms should actively optimize investment structures and improve their risk prevention mechanisms.     

The Relationship Among Managerial Sentiment,Corporate Investment,and Firm Value: Evidence from Taiwan

This study has two objectives: to examine the relationship between managerial sentiment and corporate investment and to examine the relationship between investment and firm value. We use a sample of Taiwanese firms and find that an optimal level of investment that maximizes a firm's value does exist and that it depends upon the quality of the investment opportunities. In addition, the empirical results show that when firms have valuable (nonvaluable) investment opportunities, managerial optimism (pessimism) makes overinvestment (underinvestment) more likely. Interestingly, the overinvestment (underinvestment) phenomenon for optimistic (pessimistic) managers differs significantly between valuable project and nonvaluable project firms.     

Government integrity and corporate investment efficiency

We explore the relation between government integrity and firms’ investment efficiency in the context of China’s deepening reforms and its strengthening the social credit system. We find that government integrity is positively associated with the investment efficiency of listed companies in China. Government integrity is negatively related to corporate underinvestment, but insignificantly related to corporate overinvestment. Higher government integrity reduces underinvestment in non-state-owned firms, but this relation is not significant in state-owned firms. Furthermore, we find that the negative relation between government integrity and underinvestment is only significant for firms in industries that receive supportive government policies. This study enriches research on corporate investment by adopting the perspective of government integrity, and supplements the literature on government integrity and its economic consequences. Our study also provides micro-level empirical evidence that strengthening government integrity will promote the economic transformation of China.     

Political Connections and the Efficiency of Capital Allocation Through Bond Financing in Chinese Listed Companies

Using a database of firms issuing short-term financing bonds and mid-term notes in China from 2007 to 2011, we uncover whether and how political connections influence the companies' capital allocation efficiency. The authors show that politically connected firms have significantly lower capital allocation efficiency, especially in the case of overinvestment subsamples. In addition, different types of political connections have different effects on firms' inefficient investments. Compared with firms connected to members of the people's congresses and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (MPCP firms), firms connected to government officials (GOF) overinvest more and underinvest less. One year after bond financing, GOF politically connected firms decreased overinvestment, while underinvestment undergoes an upward trend in the MPCP firms.     

Mandatory CSR disclosure,monitoring and investment efficiency: evidence from China

This study investigates the effect of mandatory corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure on firms’ investment efficiency in China. Using the CSR regulation that mandates a group of listed firms to disclose stand‐alone CSR reports after 2008 as a natural experiment, we find that firms subject to the mandatory CSR regulation have decreased investment inefficiency subsequent to the mandate, especially in cases of overinvestment. This effect is more pronounced for firms with a control‐ownership wedge, state‐owned enterprises (SOEs), and firms having lower institutional ownership. Further analyses find that the reduction of overinvestment is much more significant in industries with high pollution and that the reduction in investment is not due to the CSR spending siphoning off capital used in other projects. We argue that mandatory corporate social responsibility disclosure improves monitoring over firms in China, especially when firms are characterised as having severe agency problems.     

Legal shareholder protection and corporate R&D investment

This paper investigates the effects of shareholder protection law on corporate R&D investment. I find that the institutional protection of shareholder benefits reduces both underinvestment and overinvestment in R&D projects. Legal shareholder rights significantly increase R&D investment for firms that may underinvest, but reduce R&D for firms that may overinvest. Shareholder protection further enhances the growth of firms in R&D intensive industries, and promotes the economic growth of innovative countries. The results consistently show that enforcing stronger legal shareholder protection can help firms achieve an overall more efficient capital allocation to productive R&D investment.     

Financial reporting quality,debt maturity and investment efficiency

This study, conducted with a sample of Spanish listed companies during the period 1998–2008, examines the role of financial reporting quality and debt maturity in investment efficiency. The results show that financial reporting quality mitigates the overinvestment problem. Likewise, lower debt maturity can improve investment efficiency, reducing both overinvestment and underinvestment problems. We further find that financial reporting quality and debt maturity are mechanisms with some degree of substitution in enhancing investment efficiency: firms with lower (higher) use of short-term debt, exhibit higher (lower) financial reporting quality effect on investment efficiency.     

Corporate site visit and tax avoidance: The effects of monitoring and tax knowledge dissemination

This study examines how institutional investors' corporate site visits affect tax avoidance. Using quantile regressions, we find that corporate site visits decrease tax avoidance for firms at high levels of tax avoidance and increase tax avoidance for firms at low levels. The effect of corporate site visits on tax avoidance is stronger for firms subject to a weaker information environment, which suggests that institutional investors acquire additional firm-specific information via corporate site visits and play a more effective monitoring role. We also find that visitors who visited low-tax firms in prior years share tax-planning knowledge with high-tax firms which they visit in the current year. The effect of tax knowledge transfer is more pronounced when the visitors are from incumbent institutional shareholders. This study identifies corporate site visits as a channel via which institutional investors serve as monitors to managers and as facilitators of tax knowledge transfer.     

Does supply network location affect corporate investment efficiency?

Using social network analysis, we compute a firm's network position characteristics and then examine their effects on firm investment efficiency. The results show that both supply network centrality and structural holes have no significant impact on corporate overinvestment but can ease corporate underinvestment by alleviating financial constraints. The specific paths are as follows: a firm that has a high level of centrality or rich structural holes in the supply network is more likely to obtain commercial credit and bank loans; however, supply network position has no significant impact on equity financing.     

Do site visits mitigate corporate fraudulence? Evidence from China

Corporate site visits emerge as an increasingly important means of information acquisition process for analysts and institutional investors. In this study, we test whether and how site visits mitigate corporate fraud risk using a unique dataset of site visits to Chinese listed firms. We find that corporate site visits can substantially reduce the incidence of corporate fraud, which is robust to adding a series of control variables, alternative model specifications and alternative measures of corporate fraud, as well as accounting for endogeneity issue and controlling for firm and time fixed effects. This negative effect is more pronounced for firms with poorer information environment and for firms with weaker corporate governance. Furthermore, we examine the mechanisms underlying the negative association between site visits and corporate fraud. Overall, this paper contributes to the literature by providing complementary evidence that site visits are important venues for analysts and institutional investors to collect firm-specific information and monitor the management of firms in China. Our findings also provide significant practical and policy implications for investors and regulators who seek to promote corporate information disclosure and mitigate the risk of corporate fraud.     

Banking system reform and investment–cash flow relation: Case of a small transition economy

This research examines the effect of banking system reform which is measured by foreign bank's presence on investment–cash flow relation in a context of a small transition economy. The U-shape relation between investment and cash flow is found. We also find evidence that the presence of foreign banks in Vietnam results in decreasing in dependence on local banks and has changed corporate investment behaviors. Company investments are less reliant on internal cash flow in the post reform period. Although overinvestment of state controlled firms is not reduced but underinvestment problem of non-state-controlled listed firms is mitigated due to better accessibility to bank loans. The investigated relation between investment and leverage is robust for this conclusion.     

Lead independent directors and investment efficiency

I show that the presence of a lead independent director on the corporate board is positively associated with investment efficiency. The result is more pronounced for firms with weaker corporate governance standards, less transparent financial disclosure, and greater financial constraints. The lead director presence is negatively associated with overinvestment (underinvestment) for firms with large cash balances and low leverage (high cash flow volatility). Moreover, the lead director investment-related committee membership as well as CEO power matter in this setting. The lead director board role is also positively associated with future firm performance.     

The Underinvestment and Overinvestment Hypotheses: an Analysis Using Panel Data

We study the relationship between firm value and investment to test the underinvestment and overinvestment hypotheses. The results obtained, using panel data methodology as the estimation method, indicate that the abovementioned relation is quadratic, which implies that there exists an optimal level of investment. As a consequence, firms that invest less than the optimal level suffer from an underinvestment problem, while those investing more than the optimum suffer from overinvestment. The quadratic relation is maintained when firms are classified depending on their investment opportunities, the optimum being in accordance with the quality of investment opportunities.     

投资者情绪、企业投资行为与资源配置效率

基于中国资本市场的经验数据,文章实证研究了投资者情绪对企业投资行为影响的经济后果。结果发现,投资者情绪与企业过度投资显著正相关,而与投资不足呈显著的负相关关系;投资者情绪的冲击对企业当前和未来绩效的影响表现为"正向影响——负向影响——逐渐消退"的过程。这意味着,在中国资本市场中,投资者情绪对资源配置效率具有"恶化效应"与"校正效应"的两面性,而其"总体效应"表现为资源配置效率的降低。上述研究发现对于深入理解投资者情绪影响对企业投资行为所产生的经济后果具有重要意义,也有助于我们从微观企业的视角反思金融危机对实体经济的影响。     

Debt contracts in the presence of performance manipulation

Empirical evidence suggests that firms often manipulate reported numbers to avoid debt covenant violations. We study how a firm’s ability to manipulate reports affects the terms of its debt contracts and the resulting investment and manipulation decisions that the firm implements. Our model generates novel empirical predictions regarding the use and the level of debt covenant, the interest rate, the efficiency of investment decisions, and the likelihood of covenant violations. For example, the model predicts that the optimal debt contract for firms with relatively strong (weak) corporate governance (i.e., cost of manipulation) induces overinvestment (underinvestment). Moreover, for firms with strong (weak) corporate governance, an increase in corporate governance quality leads to tighter (looser) covenant, more (less) frequent covenant violations and lower (higher) interest rate. Our model highlights that the interest rate, which is a common proxy for the cost of debt, neither accounts for the distortion of investment efficiency nor the expected manipulation costs arising under debt financing. We propose a measure of cost of debt capital that accounts for these effects.     

政府干预、政治关联与企业非效率投资——基于中国上市公司面板数据的实证研究

以2004~2009年间701家上市公司为样本,研究政府干预、政治关联对企业非效率投资行为的影响。研究发现:政府干预一方面会加剧有自由现金流量公司的过度投资,对国有企业过度投资的影响更为严重;另一方面可以有效地缓解融资约束企业的投资不足,尤其是国有企业的投资不足。这说明,出于自身的政策性负担或政治晋升目标,政府会损害或支持所控制的企业,这为政府"掠夺之手理论"和"支持之手理论"提供了实证支持。研究还发现,政治关联与过度投资和投资不足均负相关,这表明,政治关联可以作为法律保护的替代机制来保护企业产权免受政府损害,并为企业谋取利益。     

Analyst coverage,corporate social responsibility,and firm value: Evidence from China

This paper examines how analyst coverage affects firms' engagement in corporate social responsibility (CSR). Using data on Chinese listed companies from 2010 to 2017, we find that (1) analyst coverage significantly enhances CSR engagement; (2) ownership structure, political connection, corporate governance, and media coverage moderate that association; (3) a plausible mechanism is that analyst coverage increases CSR by increasing site visits from institutional investors and improving firms' internal controls. In addition, the interaction between analyst coverage and CSR engagement has an economically sizeable incremental effect on firm value. Overall, our findings indicate that financial analysts play a critical external monitoring and informational role for organizations.     

How does institutional investors' information acquisition inhibit share pledging? Evidence from China

This study investigates whether and how institutional investors' information acquisition affects controlling shareholder's share pledging. Taking a unique data of institutional investors' corporate site visits in China, we find that institutional investors' corporate site visits significantly inhibit controlling shareholder's share pledging. This effect is robust to a series of robustness checks, including controlling for endogeneity concerns, propensity score matching method, alternative model specifications, and alternative measures of the independent variable. We then provide evidence that the negative relation between institutional investors' corporate site visits and controlling shareholder's share pledging is more pronounced for listed firms with less efficient information environment and weaker corporate governance. Further analysis indicates that the negative relation is also more pronounced when controlling shareholders are under higher margin call pressure and when the visiting institutional investors consist of more fund companies. Overall, our study is the first to provide direct evidence of the governance mechanism of financial intermediaries on shareholders' pledging decisions.     

Do corporate tax cuts increase investments?

This paper studies the effect of corporate taxes on investment. Since firms with a foreign parent have more cross-country profit shifting opportunities than domestically owned firms do, their effective tax rate and, consequently, their tax-induced costs to investment are lower. We therefore expect capital investment responses to a corporate tax cut to be heterogeneous across firms. Using firm-level data on German corporations, we exploit the 2008 tax reform, which substantially cut corporate taxes as an exogenous policy shock and expect domestically owned firms' investments to be more responsive to the reform. We show exactly this in a difference-in-differences setting. We find that the reduction in corporate tax payments led to a one-to-one increase in the real investments of domestic firms. The effect is stronger for domestic firms relying more on internal funds. Correspondingly, labor investment increased more for domestic firms, ensuring a constant mix of input factors. In addition, we show that domestic firms' sales grew faster after the tax cut than the sales of foreign-owned firms. Our results imply that corporate tax changes can increase corporate investment but that domestic firms benefit more than foreign-owned firms from a tax cut through higher investment responses resulting in greater sales growth.     

会计稳健性与上市公司投资行为——基于资产减值角度的实证分析

本文从资产减值角度考察会计稳健性对公司投资行为的影响。稳健性要求公司推迟确认不完全确定的收入,但是尽快确认可能发生的损失。在本文中,我们发现,由于及时确认损失有助于促使公司及早停止低效率的投资,因此资产减值准备计提会对公司的过度投资产生制约作用。由于及时确认损失也会促使厌恶风险的经理人放弃对风险较大但却可能盈利的项目进行投资,因此资产减值准备计提也会导致公司投资不足。我们的研究为公司过度投资问题的解决提供了一个新视角,同时也说明会计稳健性具有一定的两面性,该原则的运用应当权衡其利弊。