派自己人监督:上级股东与公司的代理成本

Send One of Us to Supervise:Superior Shareholder and the Agency Cost of Corporation

本文在细分出公司中与终极控制人关系最为密切的三类股东并将其界定为上级股东的基础上,集中考察了上级股东在降低第一类代理问题方面的治理功能。研究发现,更高的代理冲突下,公司对上级股东的参与有着更高的需求,而上级股东的介入也能够降低公司的代理成本。进一步的研究还表明,上级股东的上述监督行为符合收益最大化的理性行为框架。并且,如果按传统股权制衡研究的范式将所有非第一大股东视为一个整体,并不能观测到上述结果。

Based on the recognizing of three types of blockholders who are mostly closed to the ultimate controller and defining them as superior shareholders,this article examines their governance effects on the agency problems between shareholder and manager.This paper argues that no matter from the perspective of ability or intention to consider,the superior shareholder,which is most closed to the ultimate controller,can be a better supervisor compares with other shareholders.And using the data of listed companies during 2001-2007 in Chinese securities market,using whether the ultimate controller of the company is direct holding as the proxy of the severity of agency problem between shareholder and manager,and measuring the agency cost by the pay for performance sensitivity of managers,this paper put forward the empirical evidence which is consistent with such inference.Specifically,this paper shows that,there is a significantly higher demand for superior shareholder when the agency problem of companies is more pronounced,and the introducing of superior shareholder can actually mitigate this kind of agency cost subsequently.Further study also reveals that the supervise behavior of superior shareholder is consistent with the framework of rational economic man.That’s to say,the governance effects of the superior shareholder are significantly positively related to the net benefits of his supervise behavior.And if we take all non-controlling shareholders as a whole,just like most of the existing research on the ownership structure,results mentioned above cannot be observed.Our findings indicate the effects of different relationship between stockholders and ultimate controller on their governance role,and reinforce the determinants of the governance effects of blockholders in Chinese listed firms are not their different nature as the research based on developed capital market declared,but the different relationship between stockholders and the ultimate controller.Thus,this paper sheds light on the further study on ownership structure of Chinese listed companies.