业绩考核制度如何影响央企现金持有?——基于《考核办法》第三次修订的准自然实验

本文基于2010—2017年我国A股上市公司数据,以十八大后推行的业绩考核办法优化修订为准自然实验,选用双重差分模型检验2013年新的《考核办法》实施对中央企业的现金持有的影响,研究发现:与不受该制度影响的民营企业相比,新的《考核办法》显著正向提升央企的现金持有水平,且这一结果均通过平行趋势、控制组调整、变量替换、PSM-DID和安慰剂检验等稳健性检验;通过机制分析发现,业绩考核制度通过发挥抑制央企因超额持现所诱发的过度投资而提升央企现金持有;进一步地,业绩考核还促使央企权衡增持的现金资源二次配置策略,缩减超额持现的股利支付且转而将其用于创新活动,进而提升中央企业现金持有价值。上述结果意味着,业绩考核制度既可以抑制过度投资的无效耗费行为促使央企增持现金,又将增持现金用于“多创新,少股利”的长期价值创造权衡配置,优化增持现金利用效率,提高企业创新能力,进而提升企业价值,这为十八大以来有关中央企业高质发展和国资监管体制建设而进行改革的政策预期效果提供经验证据,同时为进一步全面深化国资监管、积极深入推进业绩考核制度优化修订提供理论依据和经验证据。

How does the New Performance Appraisal System Affect Cash Holdings of CGOEs?Evidence from the Quasi-natural Experiment Based on the Third Revision

Corporate cash holdings may be derived from the positive or negative impact of the“flexibility hypothesis”and“spending hypothesis”associated with agency conflicts and cash allocations:on the one hand,based on the“flexibility hypothesis”,self-interested executives prefer the flexibility of future cash flows.When the company generates excess cash flow,it chooses to store a large amount of cash on the spot.On the other hand,based on“dissipation hypothesis”,management is more inclined to expand the size of the company through mergers and acquisitions,over-investment or other means to quickly dissipate the current cash holdings instead of holding cash for future investment,and the company's excess cash is also highly vulnerable to the controlling shareholder.As a“baton”for the development of Central Government-owned Enterprises(CGOEs),the performance appraisal system largely presents a systemic performance management system for the SASAC to suppress agency problems caused by“owner vacancies”.The external supervision is to optimize the incentives for the responsible person of the enterprise and the high-quality development of state-owned capital,and then to optimize the CGOEs management and control system and the decision-making behavior of its responsible person.Therefore,the performance appraisal system is essentially a kind of external governance mechanism which had exerted supervision,restriction and incentive on the responsible person of the CGOEs.The external governance mechanism will inevitably have an impact on the cash holding decisions of CGOEs.Based on the data of China's A-share listed companies in 2010-2017,this paper selects the performance appraisal system in 2013,as a quasi-natural experiment,and uses the difference in difference model to test the impact of the implementation of the new“Appraisal Measures”on the cash holdings of CGOEs.The study found that:(1)The new“Appraisal Measures”significantly increase the cash holding level of CGOEs,and this result is consistent with the robustness tests.(2)Through the analysis of the mechanism,it is found that the performance appraisal system enhances the cash holdings of CGOEs by exerting excessive restraint on excessive investment.(3)Further,the performance appraisal also prompted the CGOEs to weigh the secondary allocation strategy of cash resources,reduce the dividends and use the excess cash for innovation activities,thereby enhancing the cash holding value of the central enterprises.The above results mean that the performance appraisal system can inhibit the inefficient spending behavior of excessive investment to encourage CGOEs to hoard their cash,and increase its cash for the“more innovation,less dividends”long-term value creation trade-off configuration,optimize the cash utilization efficiency.In turn,the performance appraisal system can improve the innovation capability of enterprises and enhance the value of enterprises,which provides provides theoretical basis and empirical evidence for further deepening the supervision of state-owned assets and actively promoting the performance appraisal system.