产权性质、市场化改革与融资歧视——来自上市公司投资—现金流敏感性的证据

Ownership, Marketization Reform and Financing Discrimination: Evidence from the Investment-Cash Flow Sensitivity of Chinese Listed Firms

非国有企业是否面临融资歧视?以往的研究多着眼于国有和非国有上市公司负债率差异,不能克服企业"自主选择"因素的干扰。本文从投资—现金流敏感性入手探讨融资歧视的存在性,构建动态跨期联立方程回归模型,发现国有上市公司投资水平几乎不随现金流波动,而非国有上市公司显著受其影响,从而证实了融资歧视的存在性。进一步分析表明:股权分置改革有效地提高了资本市场信贷资源的配置效率,降低了不同所有制企业资金可得性的差异,为非国有上市公司提供了相对公平的融资环境。

This paper provides an insight into the existence of financing discrimination in reference to enterprises with different ownership. A growing body of literature has indicated that in transition economies, credit unfairly tilts towards state-owned enterprises, which poses potential encumbrance to capital allocation and prosperity of economy. Despite widespread discussion, extant literature primarily examines the ownership discrimination by focusing on the difference of debt ratios and structures between stateowned and non-state-owned enterprises. This proxy confuses the concept of ＂status quo＂ and ＂discrimination＂ and does not rule out the possibility that enterprises may strategically select their capital structure without the impact of ownership. By employing the dynamic multi-equation model of investment-cash f low sensitivity, we consider the interdependent and inter-temporal nature of corporate financing decisions. Compared with the static debt ratios, the cash f low sensitivity serves as good ＂touchstone＂ for the real external financing environment for the two types of enterprise. Our empirical results of Chinese capital market suggest that state-owned enterprises have no significant investment-cash f low sensitivity and can maintain stable investment levels when they are confronted with cash f low shocks. They tend to have more privileged access to the external financing channels which are dominated by the stateowned banks. In contrast, non-state-owned enterprises are inferior in seeking external financing and cannot fully offset the cash f low f luctuations, thus exhibiting significant cash f low sensitivity. Theses conspicuously different results convincingly indicate the existence of ownership discrimination in Chinese market. Furthermore, we find evidence of the role played by China＇s split-share structure reform in eliminating ownership discrimination by improving market efficiency and providing a relatively fair financing environment for non-state-owned enterprises. Compared with the pre-reform period, no investment-cash f low sensitivity exists for the non-stateowned enterprises after the reform and the significant difference in the cash f low sensitivity between the two types of enterprises is eliminated. These findings provide useful implications for the deepening of China＇s marketization reforms and for the construction of a well-functioning financial system.