儒家文化与家庭风险资产投资

儒家文化内生于降低家庭内部交易成本和提高家庭内部治理效率的需要,其家庭主义观念及伦理秩序可能不仅影响了人际信任的半径,而且有助于强化家庭组织的风险分担功能。因此,儒家文化可能对家庭风险资产投资行为有着重要的影响。本文使用2014年和2016年中国劳动力动态调查(CLDS)数据,以明清进士密度衡量儒家文化,并采用流行病学方法回归发现,以明清进士密度衡量的儒家文化显著提高了家庭投资风险资产的概率。对影响机制的检验发现,强化了家庭组织的风险分担功能可能是儒家文化促进家庭风险资产投资行为的最主要机制,但并未发现有儒家文化显著影响一般信任的经验证据。这一研究发现增进了对儒家文化与家庭金融之间关系的理论和经验认知,意味着弘扬传统文化对于中国金融市场发展和现代经济体系建设具有积极的促进作用。

Confucian Culture and Household Investment in Risky Assets

Meeting the needs of reducing transaction costs and improving governance efficiency within households, Confucian culture with its ethical order and family value may not only affect interpersonal trust, but also help to strengthen the risk-sharing function of households. Therefore, Confucian culture may have an important impact on households’ finance behavior. Based on China Labor-force Dynamics Survey(CLDS) in 2014 and 2016, and using Ming and Qing dynasties’ jinshi density as a measure of Confucian culture, this paper investigates the impacts of Confucian culture on household investment in risky assets. Through regression analysis using the epidemiological approach, we found that Confucian culture significantly increased the probability of household investment in risky assets, and the conclusion is robust after changing the definition of risky assets, replacing the measurement of Confucian culture, repeatedly cleaning the samples and so on. Furthermore, strengthening the risk-sharing function of households may be the main mechanism for Confucian culture to increase the probability of household investment in risky assets, but no significant effect of Confucian culture on general trust was found. This paper improves the theoretical and experiential understanding of the relationship between Confucian culture and household finance, and provides valuable reference for the development of financial market and modern economic system in China.