诉讼风险如何影响企业费用粘性?——来自中国上市公司的证据

How Does Litigation Risk Impact SG&A Cost Stickiness?——Evidence from Chinese Listed Firms

诉讼是干扰企业正常运营的重要事件,不仅会导致声誉危机和潜在损失、还会增加执行成本,进而影响到企业的成本决策。本文考察了诉讼风险对企业费用粘性的影响效应,并对其中介机制进行了分析。研究发现,诉讼风险会显著降低企业费用粘性,且诉讼风险主要是通过影响调整成本、增加管理层悲观预期而作用于企业费用粘性。此外,针对诉讼案件类型、企业特质与宏观法律环境的异质性检验表明,诉讼风险与企业费用粘性的负相关关系仅在资金类诉讼案件中存在,而在产品类诉讼样本中,诉讼风险反而会提高企业费用粘性;当企业上年销售收入下滑、财务柔性水平较低以及规模较小时,诉讼风险带来的费用粘性降低效应更为明显;诉讼风险对于企业费用粘性的负向影响主要存在于地区法制化水平较低的样本中。本文从成本性态视角阐述了诉讼风险影响企业成本决策的行为逻辑,丰富和拓展了“法律与企业行为”的研究成果,同时也为企业更好地应对法律纠纷和开展成本管理活动提供了有益参考。

Litigation is an important event that hinders firms’normal operation,which not only leads to reputation risks and potential losses,but also increases the execution costs and therefore affecting firms’cost decision making.Based on the perspective of firm cost stickiness,this paper investigates the effect of litigation risk on firm cost stickiness,and also elaborates the channel and mechanism.The results indicate that litigation risk significantly decreases firm cost stickiness,and litigation risk would influence adjustment costs and improve managerial pessimistic expectations,which further reduces firm cost stickiness.Moreover,according to the heterogeneity of the types of litigation cases,firms’characteristics and the macro-level legal environment,we find that the negative relation between litigation risk and firm cost stickiness only exists in capital litigation disputes,while the product litigation cases actually increase firm cost stickiness.Further analyses show that the association between litigation risk and firm cost stickiness is more noticeable in smaller firms,and in firms with sales drop in the last year or lower levels of financial flexibility.Also,the negative relation between litigation risk and firm cost stickiness is more pronounced in the samples with a lower level of legal environment.This paper elaborates the logic about the effect of litigation risk on firm cost decision making in view of cost behavior,which enriches and expands the existing literature on“law and firm behavior”,and also provides meaningful insights for firms to better deal with lawsuits and carry out cost management activities.