贸易政策不确定性与企业成本粘性

Trade Policy Uncertainty and Corporate Cost Stickiness

本文以美国对华“301调查”引致的贸易政策不确定性上升为外生冲击,利用2014-2019年沪深A股上市公司季度数据,考察了贸易政策不确定性对微观企业成本管理决策的影响。研究发现,贸易政策不确定性上升通过影响管理层对调整成本的评估、加剧管理层的短期保盈动机以及对未来经营的悲观预期,显著降低了企业成本粘性。异质性检验表明,这一影响在非国有企业、海外客户占比高的企业、出口美国的企业以及行业竞争程度高的企业中更显著。进一步分析发现,应对贸易政策不确定性上升,管理层主要通过削减人力资源成本而非物力资源成本进行成本调整。此外,贸易政策不确定性上升所导致的成本粘性下降虽然短期内缓解了企业的经营风险,但从长期来看降低了企业资源配置效率。本文的研究拓展了贸易政策不确定性微观经济后果的文献,也有助于深化对宏观环境不确定下企业成本管理决策的认识。

Taking the increased trade policy uncertainty caused by the US“301 investigation”against China as exogenous shock,this paper selects the quarterly data of A-share listed companies from 2014 to 2019 to empirically examines the impact of trade policy uncertainty on the cost management behavior of micro-enterprises.The results suggest that the increase of trade policy uncertainty significantly reduces firms’cost stickiness by affecting management’s assessment of adjustment costs,intensifying management’s short-term profit-keeping motivation and pessimistic expectations for future operations.And this effect is more significant in non-state-owned enterprises,enterprises with high proportion of overseas customers,enterprises exporting to the United States,and enterprises with high degree of industry competition.Further analysis shows that in response to the rising uncertainty of trade policy,managers conduct cost adjustment mainly by reducing human resource cost rather than material resource cost.Although the decrease of cost stickiness caused by the increase of trade policy uncertainty alleviates the operating risk of enterprises in the short term,it will reduce the efficiency of resource allocation of enterprises in the long run.This paper expands the literature on the microeconomic consequences of trade policy uncertainty and contributes to a deeper understanding of firms’cost management decisions under uncertainty in the external environment.