The Impact of Government Intervention on Corporate Investment Allocations and Efficiency: Evidence from China

We examine whether government intervention plays an important role in determining corporate investment allocations and efficiency in China. We find the government tends to intervene to promote corporate investment in fixed assets, equity in other state‐owned enterprises (SOEs), and natural resources including oil, natural gas, and mines, but reduces research and development (R&D) investment. However, the effects of government intervention on these investment allocations are primarily found in local SOEs rather than in central SOEs or in private enterprise. Government intervention also induces a crowding‐out effect in natural resource investments of private firms, suggesting that government intervention distorts investment allocations and reduces investment efficiency.     

Does the type of ownership control matter? Evidence from China’s listed companies

By tracing the identity of large shareholders, we group China’s listed companies into those controlled by state asset management bureaus (SAMBs), state owned enterprises (SOEs) affiliated to the central government (SOECGs), SOEs affiliated to the local government (SOELGs), and Private investors. We argue that these distinct types of owners have different objectives and motivations and this will affect how they exercise their control rights over the firms they invest in. In particular, we contend that private ownership of listed firms in China is not necessarily superior to certain types of state ownership. To test our arguments we investigate the relative efficiency of state versus private ownership of listed firms and the efficiency of various forms of state ownership. The empirical results indicate that the operating efficiency of Chinese listed companies varies across the type of controlling shareholder. SOECG controlled firms perform best and SAMB and Private controlled firms perform worst. SOELG controlled firms are in the middle. The results are consistent with our predictions.     

Corruption,growth, and governance: Private vs. state-owned firms in Vietnam

We provide a firm-level analysis of the relation between corruption and growth for private firms and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in Vietnam. We obtain three different measures of the perceived corruption severity from a 2005 survey among 741 private firms and 133 SOEs. We find that corruption hampers the growth of Vietnam’s private sector, but is not detrimental for growth in the state sector. We document significant differences in the corruption severity across 24 provinces in Vietnam that can be explained by the quality of provincial public governance (such as the costs of new business entry, land access, and private sector development policies). Our results suggest that corruption may harm economic growth because it favors the state sector at the expense of the private sector and that improving the quality of local public governance can help to mitigate corruption and stimulate economic growth.     

Bureaucrats as managers and their roles in corporate diversification

We examine the diversification choices and financial performance of companies run by former bureaucrats in China. We find that the ex-bureaucrat led companies are involved in more diversified business lines than other firms managed by professionals without such government backgrounds. While former bureaucrats that manage state-owned enterprises (SOEs) tend to operate in unattractive industries, those who manage private firms do businesses in more profitable, faster-growing, and more related industries. The diversification of private firms is helped by additional borrowing capacity brought in by ex-bureaucrat CEOs, while no such financing effect is found in SOEs. The overall diversification performance associated with bureaucrat CEOs is positive in private firms, but not in SOEs. As manifested by the different diversification strategies and outcomes between private firms and SOEs, the government-linked CEOs facilitate transfers of critical business resources that benefit either owners' or governments' goals.     

Ownership–efficiency relationship and the measurement selection bias

This study analyses the bias in the selection of performance measures for ownership comparisons, which depends on the specific objectives of the firms being compared. Our sample includes 13 Canadian state‐owned enterprises (SOEs), commercialized and/or privatized between 1976 and 2001. To replace profitability measures and reduce biases, we propose the use of technical efficiency, which provides for SOEs’ specificities. Overall, the results clearly support the view that privatization has no impact on a firm's technical efficiency, the only positive impact being related to a change in the objectives of the firm while using profitability measures. The results of this study raise the question of the validity of comparisons between SOEs and private firms when using profitability indicators. The potential bias in favour of the private firms contributes to a misleading image of the public sector being presented as inferior and inefficient. The use of more sophisticated measures, such as data envelopment analysis, suggests conflicting conclusions. This study also casts doubt on the legitimacy of the privatization program initiated around the world and more specifically in Canada in which the main justification for such a reform has been to increase the performance of SOEs.     

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.     

CEO任期与企业资本投资

本文基于管理者在一定约束条件下追求自身利益最大化的逻辑思路,分析管理者任期与企业资本投资之间的关系,重点检验我国上市公司CEO的既有任期和预期任期对企业投资水平和投资效率的影响。研究结果发现,在管理者任期与投资水平的关系上,国有企业与非国有企业表现一致:CEO的既有任期越长,企业的投资水平越高;CEO的预期任期越短,企业的投资水平越低。在管理者任期与投资效率的关系上,国有企业与非国有企业表现不同:非国有企业的过度投资程度与CEO的既有任期及预期任期无关,而国有企业CEO的既有任期越长,过度投资问题越严重;CEO的预期任期越短,过度投资问题越能得到缓解。     

Government Credit,a Double‐Edged Sword: Evidence from the China Development Bank

Using proprietary data from the China Development Bank (CDB), this paper examines the effects of government credit on firm activities. Tracing the effects of government credit across different levels of the supply chain, I find that CDB industrial loans to state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) crowd out private firms in the same industry but crowd in private firms in downstream industries. On average, a $1 increase in CDB SOE loans leads to a $0.20 decrease in private firms' assets. Moreover, CDB infrastructure loans crowd in private firms. I use exogenous timing of municipal politicians' turnover as an instrument for CDB credit flows.     

A leap of faith that echoes well? The value impact of Chinese firms starting up business overseas

We investigate the impact of greenfield outward foreign direct investment (GODI) by Chinese firms on their subsequent Tobin's Q. Our findings indicate that Chinese listed companies from 2003 to 2019 generally experience a significantly positive boost in perceived firm value (or growth prospects) when engaging in overseas business start-ups (i.e., with no foreign partners) when compared to their inactive peers. The positive GODI effect is more prominent among privately owned enterprises vs. state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Our mechanism tests indicate that lowered effective tax rates and reduced illiquidity due to conducting greenfield ODI serve as the value-enhancing channels. Possibly driven by political objectives, SOEs tend to prioritize developing and Belt-Road countries as the destination for their greenfield overseas endeavors.     

Political connections,tax benefits and firm performance: Evidence from China

This paper investigates the different effects of political connections on the firm performance of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and privately owned enterprises. Using data on Chinese listed firms from 1999 to 2007, we find that private firms with politically connected managers outperform those without such managers, whereas local SOEs with connected managers underperform those without such managers. Moreover, we find that private firms with politically connected managers enjoy tax benefits, whereas local SOEs with politically connected managers are prone to more severe over-investment problems. Our study reconciles the mixed findings of previous studies on the effect of political connections on firm performance.     

Financing constraints and share pledges: Evidence from the share pledge reform in China

Financing constraints are important to triggering controlling shareholders' share pledges. However, the related literature faces two major challenges: the endogeneity problem and the lack of direct evidence of why and how individual share pledges can ease corporate financing constraints. Based on China's Share Pledge Reform (SPR) in Q4 2012 and the phenomenon that private firms face discrimination when obtaining bank loans, this paper studies the impact of financing constraints on share pledging behavior and its mechanisms by building a difference-in-differences (DID) model. The SPR makes it more convenient for shareholders to raise money through share pledges, and shareholders of private firms facing stronger financing constraints are more vulnerable to this reform than are state-owned enterprises (SOEs). After the SPR, the probability of share pledging by controlling shareholders of private firms is approximately 23.04% higher than that of controlling shareholders of SOEs, and the pledge ratio is approximately 16.53% higher. Further tests reveal that, after the SPR, controlling shareholders of private firms are more inclined than those of SOEs to provide loans to the company to alleviate its financing constraints. Heterogeneity tests further corroborate the finding that this effect is more significant in private firms that are smaller and do not have shareholders of banking and institutional firms among their top ten shareholders.     

国有和民营企业信贷融资差异研究-—基于上市公司的实证分析

基于沪深交易所上市公司的财务数据分析表明,我国国有企业的融资环境要优于民营企业的融资环境。民营企业不但因自身存在较多的问题,也因银行金融机构的信贷政策差异,导致外部融资极其困难。国有及民营企业融资影响因素的实证分析表明,国有企业不仅在获取银行贷款上具有先天优势,更容易获得中长期贷款。企业获取信贷的能力与企业本身的固定资产实力、盈利能力、资产负债率、资产规模、企业性质等因素有显著的影响关系,国有企业融资不仅在投资上挤占了民营企业的投资,也影响了我国居民的整体消费水平,进而不利于我国经济持续稳定的发展。     

Does banks’ dual holding affect bank lending and firms’ investment decisions? Evidence from China

This study investigates the effect of banks’ dual holding on bank lending and firms’ investment decisions using a sample of listed firms in China. We find that dual holding leads to easier access to bank loans, a result that is more pronounced for non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs) than SOEs. We also find that dual holding distorts banks’ lending decisions and harms the investment efficiency for SOEs, while resulting in optimal lending decisions and enhanced investment efficiency for non-SOEs. For non-SOEs, further analysis suggests that optimal lending decisions and efficient investment can be achieved for firms with higher ownership concentration, and firms in which the family and foreign investors are the controlling shareholders. We argue that, in emerging markets, whether a bank plays a monitoring role by directly holding the debt and equity claims of companies relies heavily on whether the potential collusion between firm executives and bank managers can be averted, which in turn is determined by the firms’ governance framework and ownership structure.     

Economic policy uncertainty and the cost of capital

This paper examines the impact of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on the cost of capital in China. We find that an increase in EPU results in a significantly higher cost of capital and this impact is mainly through increasing the cost of equity instead of the cost of debt. There is no significant difference between the impact of EPU on state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and the one on private firms, but a stronger impact on large firms than on small firms is found. Further analysis suggests that the stronger impact on large firms occurs only in private firms instead of SOEs. We provide and test several channels through which EPU might affect the cost of capital. Our results suggest that EPU influences the cost of capital through increasing information asymmetry and reducing the quality of internal controls.     

The effect of the split share structure reform on working capital management of Chinese companies

Before the introduction of the Split Share Structure Reform (SSSR) of 2005, a dual stock system characterized Chinese-listed firms. The states owned non-tradable shares and private owners held tradable shares. The dual system generated agency problems because state owners enjoyed all the rights reserved for tradable shares but escaped the stock market risk faced by non-state shareholders. Because executives of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) received rewards based on the book value of assets rather than the market price of shares, they had no incentive to maximize the share price. The SSSR led to the conversion of non-tradable shares to tradable shares, with two major implications: (1) the interests of government and private owners are now more closely aligned and (2) government agents of SOEs are now rewarded and punished based on a firm's market performance. Thus, the expectation is that government agents turn their attention to improving a firm's market performance rather than its book value during the post-reform era. We examine the impact of the SSSR on Chinese firms' investments in working capital. Based on 511 manufacturing firms between 2003 and 2011, we find that the SSSR is associated with significant reductions in working capital investments during the post-reform period. The reduced investment in working capital is associated with improved market performance of these firms.     

Operating and stock market performance of state-owned enterprise privatizations: The Spanish experience

We investigate the operating and stock market performance of Spanish state-owned enterprises (SOEs) privatized through public share issue offerings (SIPs) from 1990 to 2001, when the last SIP was conducted. We compare the performance of SOEs and privately-owned firms. We find significant operating improvements in Spanish SOEs after the privatization. Specifically, they show significant increases in income efficiency, real sales and employment. Spanish governments tried to minimize the foregone proceeds when selling SOE shares and underpriced them lower than private firms. We relate these results with the pressure of the Maastricht Treaty fiscal criteria, as well as lower information asymmetries between firms and investors. Finally, we do not find long-term abnormal stock market performance after SIPs.     

Government intervention and investment efficiency: Evidence from China

The extant corporate investment literature has documented that information asymmetry and agency conflicts between managers and outside investors prevent firms from making optimal investment decisions. In this study, we investigate whether government intervention, as another form of friction, distorts firms' investment behavior and leads to investment inefficiency. Using Chinese data, we test this by measuring government intervention at two different levels. First, we compare investment efficiency between SOEs and non-SOEs. We find that the sensitivity of investment expenditure to investment opportunities is significantly weaker for SOEs. Second, we measure government intervention by whether a firm is politically connected through the employment of top executives with a government background. We find that political connections significantly reduce investment efficiency in SOEs. However, we do not find such evidence in non-SOEs. Taken together, our findings suggest that government intervention in SOEs through majority state ownership or the appointment of connected managers distorts investment behavior and harms investment efficiency.     

Financialization and Corporate Performance in China: Promotion or Inhibition?

Using a sample of Chinese listed firms for the period 2009 to 2018, we analyze the relationship between the financialization of non-financial corporations (NFCs) and corporate performance from both long-term and short-term perspectives. Our results show that the impact of financialization on firm performance is not simply a crowding-out or pulling effect but rather depends on the type of financial assets held by the firms. The holdings of investment financial assets generally have a pulling effect on both the short-term performance and market expectations of a firm's future profits as proxied by Tobin's Q, but they crowd out the innovation activities that are critical to long-term performance. Although monetary financial assets positively affect corporate profitability, they inhibit the increase of return on invested capital and long-term performance. Additionally, compared with monetary financial assets, investment financial assets play a more important role in promoting short-term performance, although the crowding-out effect on innovation activities is more prominent for investment financial assets. Furthermore, this paper also concludes that compared with manufacturing and non-state-owned enterprises (NSOEs), the role of financialization in promoting the performance of non-manufacturing and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) is more significant.     

Bank Concentration and Firm Investment: Empirical Evidence from India

This paper investigates the impact of bank concentration on firm-level investment across firm groups classified according to size, investment destination, and debt maturity structure. Using data of 302 manufacturing firms for the period 2000-2009, we show that elevated financial constraints are associated with small and medium-size enterprises and firms that are dependent on short-term debt and exhibit high levels of sensitivity of investment to cash flow. Our empirical finding confirms that bank concentration exerts a positive impact on firms' financial constraints on investment. This effect is more pronounced for small firms and firms dependent on short-term debt. However, our results are indifferent to domestic versus foreign investing firm groups.     

Monetary policy,government control and capital investment: Evidence from China

This study examines how the relationships between local governments and local enterprises moderate the effect of targeted monetary policies through different action-propagating mechanisms. First, we investigate the impact of monetary policies on enterprise investment in areas with different institutional environments. Second, we investigate the impact of monetary policies on state-owned enterprises (SOEs) with different property rights structures. Third, we examine how political connections can influence the action-propagating mechanism of monetary policies. We conclude that in China monetary policies have different effects on SOEs and on private enterprises with or without political connections. Specifically, local government interventions can significantly weaken and distort the effects of monetary policies, such that the intended reduction in investment is noticeably alleviated for SOEs and private enterprises with close links to local governments.