经济政策不确定性与企业退出决策:理论与实证研究

经济政策影响微观企业经营是现有研究的共识.在已有文献基础上,文章考察了经济政策不确定性对企业退出决策的影响.文章基于一个代表性企业最优退出决策的框架,构建了经济政策不确定性影响企业退出决策作用机制的理论模型,并利用1998?2011年中国工业企业微观数据对理论模型进行了实证检验.研究结果显示,经济政策不确定性通过增加市场预期收益的机制降低了企业的退出概率,即面对高水平的经济政策不确定性时,企业对未来市场形成了良好的预期,倾向于采取理性的"延迟退出"决策.进一步分析发现,企业退出决策的"延迟现象"在不同企业、行业和区域间呈现出异质性,经济政策不确定性更多地延迟了具有优越发展前景的企业、行业及区域的市场退出.从企业方面来看,这一现象在规模小、跨产业经营、出口、政府补贴的企业及创新企业中更加显著;从行业方面来看,这一现象在资金技术密集型的行业及生产率高的行业中更加显著;从区域来看,这一现象在市场化程度高的区域及经济增长快的区域更加显著.可见,政府的经济政策变动,不仅引导了企业制定理性的战略决策,而且激励了优势资源和市场的持续发展.

Economic Policy Uncertainty and Firm Exit Decisions:Theoretical and Empirical Analysis

Under the special political system in China,changes in economic policies are relatively fre-quent,and Chinese firms are faced with high economic policy uncertainty. Also,how economic policy uncer-tainty affects the decision-making of micro-firms has been the research focus of many scholars. This paper mainly examines the effect of economic policy uncertainty on firm exit decisions,and focuses on the prob-lems that how economic policy uncertainty affects firm exit decisions,what is the transmission mechanism of this influence and whether heterogeneity exists between different economic subjects. It not only makes up for the deficiency of existing theoretical research,and enriches the content and scenes of related research,but also provides important reference for Chinese governments to adjust economic policies and corporate managers to make strategic decisions. In particular,under a framework of a representative firm's optimal exit decision,this paper builds a theoretical model to discuss the mechanisms hiding behind it,and further empirically tests the model based on micro data of industrial firms in China newly established between 1998 and 2011. Our results indicate that economic policy uncertainty reduces firm exit by increasing expected market returns,i.e. in the condition of high economic policy uncertainty,firms form a good expectation for future market and tend to delay exit decisions. Further analysis suggests that the "delayed phenomenon" of firm exit decisions has het-erogeneity among different firms,industries and regions and economic policy uncertainty has mainly delayed market exit of firms,industries and regions with superior development prospects. Among different firms,this phenomenon is more significant in small firms,multi-sectoral firms,export firms,government-subsidized firms and innovative firms. Among different industries,this phenomenon is more significant in capital-intens-ive and technology-intensive industries and industries with high productivity. Among different regions,this phenomenon is more significant in regions with high marketization and economic growth. Therefore,as gov-ernments change their economic policies,they not only guide firms to formulate rational strategic decisions, but also encourage sustainable development of superior resources and markets. The conclusions of this paper provide important enlightenment for Chinese policy makers and corporate managers. On the one hand,in the period of frequent replacement of economic policies,governments should not only pay attention to the role of their positive behavior in macroeconomy,but also focus on the micro-firms' response. At the same time,gov-ernments should send a positive signal to the market,so as to raise firms' expectations for the future market and prevent firms from making irrational exit decisions when they lose confidence for the market. On the oth-er hand,during the period of economic policy uncertainty,corporate managers can enhance their option value and survivability in the future market by strengthening their capabilities,adjusting their business models,ad-justing their orientation to industrial policies and using the superior environment in the regions.