股利政策、自由现金流与过度投资——基于公司治理机制的考察

Dividend Policy,Free Cash Flow and Overinvestment:An Investigation Based on Corporate Governance Mechanism

过度投资广泛存在于中国上市公司中,国有企业尤其突出。本文基于委托代理理论,以2006-2013年国有企业为样本,实证检验在不同公司治理模式下,股利政策、自由现金流与过度投资的关系。结果验证了Jensen的自由现金流假说。可以通过发放现金股利来抑制由自由现金流引起的过度投资行为,但增加了该行为的不确定性。公司治理的监督和激励机制均能够有效抑制企业自由现金流的过度投资,两者结合使用则能增强这种抑制效果。

China is currently in the market economy transition period, state owned enterprise investment do not aim at the shareholder value maximization, with that the profits of state owned enterprises do not been paid for quite a long time, lead to that enterprise internal control a large amount of retained earnings, these profits don＇t need strictly audit supervision like external financing while using, it is affected by the financial management target displacement and the influence of investment soft constraints, leading to the country state-owned enter- prise investment decision-making behavior somewhat different. Over- investment widely exists in state owned enterprises, base on agency theory, with 2009 to 2013 state owned listed companies as the sample, this paper empirically studies in different corporate governance model the over investment problem of state owned enterprises （SOEs） and whether the investment of SOE relates to its free cash flow, verifies whether the dividend policy of SOEs can effectively restrain the over investment, and further discusses whether the perfection of corporate governance mechanism can restrain the over investment of free cash flow and whether the role of dividend policy of SOEs in restraining the over investment of free cash flow can be enhanced. This research con- clusions show that the free cash flow hypothesis of Jensen is verified, the conclusions may also enrich and expand the literature related to the agency cost of free cash flow and also deepens and develops the action mechanism and channel of corporate governance mechanism that affect the corporate investment efficiency and the shareholders＇ wealth max- imization objective. The payment of cash dividend can significantly prevent the corporations from over investing and cutting cost. From the perspective of cutting cost and improving the governance efficiency, the conclusions of this study also offer some useful reminders for the dividend distribution of state owned corporations.