Vertical interlock and the value of cash holdings

We test whether vertical interlock endangers cash resources that manifests in a lower value of cash in listed companies affiliated with business groups. Using a sample of 9,032 observations from 2007 to 2016 in the Chinese market, we find that investors tend to value cash holdings in companies with vertical interlock substantially less than in those without. The marginal effect of vertical interlock on the value of cash remains significantly negative after controlling for existing governance mechanisms, accounting conservatism and internal control quality, shedding light on agency problems between majority shareholders and minority shareholders within business groups of emerging markets.     

Share pledging,payout policy,and the value of cash holdings

Share pledging for insiders’ personal bank loans is associated with the agency problems of insider risk aversion and stock price crash risk. We examine the relation between insider share pledging and the value of cash holdings using the pledging data of listed firms in Taiwan. We find that the value of cash holdings is lower for pledging firms, especially for those that are relatively more risk averse. Pledging firms that repurchase shares have a higher marginal value of cash than those with other payout methods, likely due to the role of repurchases in reducing the stock price crash risk. Our results show how insiders’ personal financing incentives arising from share pledging would affect the value of cash holdings from the perspective of agency problems and payout policy.     

Free cash flow productivity among Chinese listed companies: A comparative study of SOEs and non-SOEs

This paper investigates the free cash flow productivity of SOEs compared with non-SOEs and examines its possible determinants. We find that SOEs have slightly weak free cash flow productivity but significantly stronger than non-SOEs. Similar performance exists among commercial class I and II SOEs and public-benefit SOEs. Further analyses suggest that firm size, age, sales growth, ownership concentration, government subsidies, and industry monopoly factors cannot explain this phenomenon. The common driver for all types of SOEs to generate stronger free cash flows than non-SOEs is their stronger expense control capability.     

Corporate governance and firm value: Evidence from Chinese state-controlled listed firms

The association between corporate governance and firm value has been extensively studied in Chinese listed firms. Based on the characteristics of their ultimate shareholders, Chinese listed firms can be categorised as (1) central state-controlled, (2) local state-controlled or (3) non-state-controlled. Some scholars have described Chinese government policy as ‘zhuada fangxiao’, thus suggesting that the corporate governance mechanisms (CGMs) of central state-controlled listed firms (SCLFs) are better than those of local state-controlled listed firms. Therefore, this paper specifically examines the influence of CGMs on the value of central SCLFs and local SCLFs. Analysis of 2006 firm-year observations from 2007 to 2009 suggests that the aggregate ownership of other large shareholders and the remuneration of top executives exhibit different effects on firm value in central and local SCLFs. The results also provide evidence that there is no endogenous effect of firm value on the ownership of the largest shareholder in central and local SCLFs.     

Corporate codes of ethics and cash holdings: International evidence

In the presence of agency costs, managers retain cash for their own benefit at the expense of shareholder wealth. Extending prior literature on the role of corporate governance in mitigating the effects of agency conflicts on corporate cash holdings, we study a governance mechanism that has largely been overlooked, namely, corporate codes of ethics. We find a negative association between code of ethics quality and cash holdings, which suggests that managers hold less cash when the firm has a strong code of ethics in place. The effect is greater when agency costs are elevated due to weaker country-level investor protections. We also find that payouts and the marginal value of cash holdings to investors are increasing in code quality. Overall, our results are consistent with codes of ethics helping to limit opportunistic behaviour from managers when determining the firm's level of cash holdings.     

Multiple large shareholders and corporate environmental protection investment: Evidence from the Chinese listed companies

Agencies can reduce problems by adopting a governance structure of multiple large shareholders. However, multiple large shareholders may collude, thereby reducing the behavior that can create long-term value for the company. This paper uses a sample of companies listed on the Shenzhen and Shanghai stock exchanges between 2008 and 2017 to investigate the relationship between multiple large shareholders and corporate environmental protection investment (CEPI). We find that multiple large shareholders will significantly reduce CEPI. Specifically, external supervision and a company’s ownership structure affect the relationship between multiple large shareholders and CEPI. In addition, after participating in SOEs, non-state-owned shareholders will significantly improve CEPI of SOEs.     

The effect of predation risk on cash holdings: Empirical evidence from the U.S. property‐liability insurance industry

Corporate cash holdings play a significant role in the U.S. property‐liability insurance industry yet the topic of insurer cash holdings policy has largely been overlooked by prior empirical research. While a number of studies have investigated firm‐specific factors related to cash holdings in the insurance industry, prior research has not examined how market concentration and potential predation risk impact cash holdings. We propose a new measure of market concentration and provide evidence in support of the predation risk theory. Specifically, we show that insurers exposed to more concentrated markets tend to hold more cash. Furthermore, the relation between market concentration and cash holdings is influenced by access to internal capital. While unaffiliated insurers without access to internal capital hold greater levels of cash in more concentrated markets, group insurers with access to internal capital do not hold greater levels of cash to mitigate predation risk.     

The impact of political connections and business groups on cash holdings: Evidence from Chinese listed firms

We investigated the impact of political connections and business group affiliation on the cash holdings of firms listed on two main Chinese stock exchanges. We applied panel data regression analysis on a dataset comprising 10,832 observations for these companies from 2008 to 2015. We found political connections to be positively correlated with cash holdings, while business group affiliation is negatively correlated. Firms with both political connections and business group affiliations hold more cash. These findings are consistent with the tenets of agency theory and the speculative motives of corporate managers.     

Stakeholder orientation and the value of cash holdings: Evidence from a natural experiment

We investigate whether and, if so, how stakeholder orientation affects the value of cash holdings by disciplining inefficient management and reducing agency costs. In so doing, we exploit the staggered enactment of constituency statutes across different states as an exogenous shock that increases the degree of stakeholder orientation substantially. Specifically, we gauge the monitoring effect of stakeholders by using the market value of cash framework of Faulkender and Wang (2006). We find that on average the marginal value of cash holdings increases significantly, both statistically and economically, after the passage of constituency statutes. The effect of constituency statutes on the value of cash holdings is stronger for firms with relatively weaker stakeholder power, high agency costs, and high information asymmetry. In subsequent tests, we show that investment efficiency in M&As and capital expenditures has improved significantly after the adoption of constituency statutes suggesting that heightened stakeholder monitoring over investments is a potential channel to enhance the value of cash holdings. Overall, our results suggest that stakeholder orientation increases the value of cash holdings by mitigating agency problems.     

Does EVA performance evaluation improve the value of cash holdings? Evidence from China

This paper investigates the influence of the economic value added(EVA)performance evaluation,issued in 2010 by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administra...     

Cash holdings of listed and unlisted firms: new evidence from the euro area

This paper examines the cash holdings behavior of listed and unlisted firms. We argue that unlisted firms, which are smaller, face a greater wedge between the cost of external and internal finance and as a result they need to rely more on the later. Relying on internal funds means that firms have a precautionary motive to hold cash. We test our theory using an unbalanced panel of mainly small medium enterprises within the euro area over the period 2003–2017 paying special attention to the role of financial pressure, financial constraints and the recent financial crisis. Our findings reveal that unlisted firms hold more cash than their listed counterparts due to precautionary motives. In addition, when considering the effect of financial pressure, the results show that the difference in cash holdings between listed and unlisted firms exhibit a ‘U-shaped’ relationship. Finally, unlisted firms have a higher sensitivity to save cash out of cash flow than listed firms. Our results are robust to using different specifications and different financial pressure measures.     

董事会行为与公司业绩关系研究——一个理论框架及我国上市公司的实证检验

本文研究了董事会行为与公司业绩之间的关系。我们首先从董事会成员的能力、努力程度和董事会组织认同与和谐等三个方面提出了董事会行为与公司业绩相关性的逻辑框架。然后,利用我国沪市上市公司的数据对董事会行为与公司业绩之间的相关性进行了实证检验。研究结果表明,董事会成员的能力、努力程度与公司业绩正相关,董事会成员之间的和谐程度与公司业绩相关。这表明董事会行为确实影响着公司业绩,而且这种影响比起董事会结构与特征更为直接。     

超额现金持有水平与产品市场竞争优势——来自中国上市公司的经验证据

有关企业持现动机及其经济后果的已有研究较少关注现金持有的战略效应。本文借鉴公司战略经济学理论,探索性地研究了企业超额持现对产品市场竞争优势的影响,为企业财务决策与产品市场竞争之间的紧密联系提供了新的经验证据。我们研究发现,企业超额持现具有战略效应,且超额持现水平与产品市场竞争优势呈倒U型关系。进一步的研究显示,与民营企业相比,国有企业在相对较低的超额持现水平上出现对产品市场竞争优势影响的负向净效应。     

Authoritarian state,global expansion and corporate social responsibility reporting: The narrative of a Chinese state-owned enterprise

This case study examines why stand-alone Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting has been initiated in a Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE). Chinese SOEs have been pioneering CSR reporting since the mid–2000?s and extant literature interprets its development as no more than a consequence of government interventions. However, there is a dearth of qualitative evidence illuminating the subtle interrelationships between the global, national and internal organisational dynamics mediating CSR reporting initiative of Chinese SOEs within the authoritarian state. To fill this gap, we provide a nuanced multi-level institutional analysis of the drivers underlying the initiation of CSR reporting within the case examined.     

ESG disclosure and technological innovation capabilities of the Chinese listed companies

The main objective of this study is to explore how ESG disclosure effectively promotes technological innovation capabilities (TIC) and also in different industries (green vs. high-tech). Further, examine the role of financing constraint (FC) in the relationship between the ESG disclosure and TIC. We employed the panel regression model, Causal step approach, Bootstrap mediation effect test, 2SLS, and GMM model. We used Bloomberg’s ESG disclosure score of China’s A-share listed companies from 2011 to 2019 (1); we found that the ESG disclosure has a significant relationship with corporate innovation indicators (OTI, STI, NSTI) and play a significant role in promoting TIC at different levels of corporate innovation (2) ESG disclosure of non-green (high-tech) industry is more effectively promote TIC than green (non-high tech) industry (3) ESG disclosure can promote corporate innovation by reducing the level of corporate financing constraints, and FC has a partial intermediary role between ESG and TIC.     

Impact of managerial ownership on investment and liquidity constraints: Evidence from Chinese listed companies

We examine the impact of managerial ownership on investment and financial constraints in the context of China. Using the system generalized method of moments estimation of an investment Euler equation, we find that investment decisions are related to managerial ownership in two ways. First, managerial ownership exerts a positive direct effect on corporate investment decisions by aligning management’s incentives with the interests of shareholders. Second, managerial ownership helps to reduce the degree of financial constraints faced by firms, suggesting that managerial ownership acts as a form of credible guarantee to lenders, signaling the quality of investment projects to the capital markets. Our findings suggest that recent policies enacted by the Chinese government, aimed at reforming ownership structure and encouraging managerial ownership in listed firms, help reduce agency costs and asymmetric information; thereby facilitating firms’ investment efficiency. Our findings will be of interest to scholars, practitioners, and policy makers interested in the financial impacts of management-compensation contracts.     

An analysis of the adoption, perceived benefits, and expected future emphasis of western management accounting practices in Chinese SOEs and JVs

This paper considers the adoption, perceived benefits, and expected future emphasis of western management accounting practices in the Chinese emerging market economy based on a sample of 64 joint ventures (JVs) and 115 State Owned Enterprises (SOE) gathered from a questionnaire survey. The study finds that the level of adoption of management accounting practices is most influenced by ownership type of the enterprise (JV or SOE) and to a lesser extent by the nature of the management accounting techniques to be adopted. A further significant finding is that management accounting practices such as budgeting for controlling costs, profit and sales budgeting, and target costing are perceived to be more beneficial for SOEs compared to JVs. However, responsibility accounting which is traditionally associated with SOEs and accounting for decision making is perceived to be less beneficial to SOEs compared with JVs.     

非国有股东治理与国有企业去僵尸化——来自国有上市公司董事会“混合”的经验证据

国有企业是党和国家事业发展的重要基础,如何有效解决部分国企的僵尸化现象是做强做优做大国有企业和实现经济社会高质量发展的关键环节,本文研究新时代全面深化国企混改背景下非国有股东治理对国有企业去僵尸化的影响作用。研究发现:非国有股东参与国企高层治理可以显著降低冗员规模和提升资本密集度,进而降低国有企业的僵尸化倾向,而仅持股等股权结构维度的治理影响较弱;当非国有股东参与国企治理的能力更强时,可以更好地发挥前述治理作用。通过细分僵尸企业识别指标,本文发现非国有股东治理可以在抑制低息贷款获取和改善盈利能力两方面降低相应国企的僵尸化程度,促使其正常经营运转。最后,经过良好治理的国有企业生产能力和市场价值得到显著提升。本文结论表明,非国有股东治理对国有企业去僵尸化和发展壮大具有积极的促进作用,这不仅对僵尸企业治理和国企改革的学术文献进行了有益补充,还为在全面建设社会主义现代化国家新征程中更好地统筹国有企业中流砥柱作用提供了政策参考价值。     

公司治理环境、控制权和现金流权分离与现金持有量价值——基于我国上市公司的实证分析

公司治理环境、控制权和现金流权分离度共同影响着企业的现金持有量,实证研究发现:我国公司治理环境与现金持有量之间为正相关关系;控股股东控制权和现金流权偏离度与现金持有量之间为负相关关系,但是公司治理环境的改善对这种关系有抑制作用;与国有企业相比,治理环境和上市公司现金持有量之间的正相关关系在私营企业中表现得更为明显。     

董事会特征与内部控制目标的实现——来自中国上市公司的经验证据

以2009～2011年中国A股上市公司为研究样本,实证研究了董事会特征与内部控制各目标之间的关系。研究发现,董事会特征与财务报告可靠性、经营效率效果以及法律遵循性之间的相关关系与假设并不完全契合。独立董事比例和审计委员会的设置与内部控制目标的实现显著正相关,在各指标间无差异。董事会会议频率对内部控制目标的实现作用不显著。董事长与CEO两职合一一定程度上能够提高企业的经营效益,但与财务报告可靠性、法律法规遵循性却呈负相关关系。