党组织参与治理与国有企业金融化

本文基于中国特色国有企业公司治理视角分析党组织参与治理在解决国有企业金融化中的作用,并以2006—2018年A股国有上市公司为样本进行实证检验。理论分析方面,通过整合金融化“预防性动机”“投机动机”和“盈余管理动机”构建综合的机制分析框架。实证研究发现,党组织通过“双向进入”“交叉任职”参与治理,有效抑制了企业金融化的“投机动机”和“盈余管理动机”,显著降低了国有企业金融化程度。党组织参与治理的效果在“讨论前置”实施前后、不同层级国有企业间以及不同方式的“双向进入”安排中存在显著差异。进一步研究发现,党组织参与治理对金融资产收益率没有影响,但显著提高了风险金融资产的市场价值。本文有助于丰富和发展中国情境下公司治理理论,为抑制国有资本“脱实向虚”、促进实体经济健康发展提供了政策启示。

Participation of the Communist Party of China in Corporate >Governance and the Financialization of State-owned Enterprises

Funds that circulate within the financial sector without entering the real economy restrict the high-quality development of China's economy. The key to solving this problem lies in identifying the motivations behind enterprise financialization and devising corresponding solutions. This study investigates the influence of the participation of the Communist Party of China in corporate governance on the financialization of state-owned enterprises, a topic of great theoretical and practical significance.
We build a theoretical framework to analyze the effect of Communist Party participation in corporate governance on state-owned enterprise financialization from three dimensions of motivation: precautionary motivation, speculative motivation and earnings management motivation. We find that Communist Party participation reduces the uncertainty of economic policy, thus restraining precautionary motivation; corrects for managerial short-sightedness and improves managerial ability to tolerate and correct mistakes, thus restraining speculative motivation; and weakens the compensation incentive function of management teams while strengthening their supervisory effect, thus inhibiting earnings management motivation. Overall, the participation of the Communist Party in governance can reduce the level of financialization of state-owned enterprises.
Empirical tests are conducted based on samples of Chinese A-share state-owned listed companies from 2006 to 2018. The results show that the participation of the Communist Party reduces the degree of financialization of state-owned enterprises, and this result remains robust to an instrumental variable test, a propensity score matching-difference-in-differences test and a Heckman two-stage test. Mechanistic tests show that financial asset allocation by corporate shadow banking is the speculative motivation for corporate financialization, whereas non-shadow banking financial asset allocation is the precautionary motivation for corporate financialization. Communist Party participation in governance significantly inhibits both speculative motivation and earnings management motivation for financialization, but has no significant effect on precautionary motivation. A heterogeneity test shows that this effect is more significant after (than before) the implementation of “pre-discussion” arrangements, and is more significant in central state-owned enterprises than in local state-owned enterprises. We also find that the representation of Communist Party members on boards of directors can effectively reduce the financialization of state-owned enterprises, whereas the representation of members on boards of supervisors and managers has no significant impact. Further tests show that Communist Party participation has no significant impact on the return rate of financial assets but significantly improves the market value of risky financial assets, which indicates that capital market investors recognize the positive effect of the Communist Party on the governance of state-owned enterprises.
The implications of the study are as follows. First, full play should be given to the leading role of party organizations, as this will remedy the defects of traditional corporate governance structures. Second, tailored policies should be used, rather than a “one-size-fits-all” approach, to improve firms' financialization. Third, a “pre-discussion power list” should be compiled and used in pre-discussions, to maximize the benefit obtained from these pre-discussions. Fourth, the governance capacity of the Communist Party in local state-owned enterprises requires further improvement. Fifth, the efficiency of board-of-supervisors' participation in corporate governance must be improved. Sixth, Communist Party participation in corporate governance can enhance the value of risky financial assets held by state-owned enterprises, indicating that investors in the capital market recognize the value of the Party's participation in corporate governance. This serves as practical verification of the theory of corporate governance of state-owned enterprises with Chinese characteristics.