现金持有的投资平滑作用及其对产品市场竞争绩效的影响

Cash Holdings,Investment Smoothing and Product Market Competitive Performance

由于内外部融资的不确定性,企业投资支出常常发生波动。而投资支出的变化会导致高昂的调整成本,因此企业有必要保持投资支出的稳定。本文重点关注企业在保持投资支出稳定的过程中,现金持有的作用及其所带来的竞争效应。结果表明,现金持有对企业投资有显著的平滑作用,这种平滑作用作为现金持有作用于产品市场的一种重要途径,还为企业带来了积极的竞争绩效:在投资平滑程度较高的企业中,投资支出、现金持有对产品市场竞争绩效有更明显的积极作用。

A firm＇s investment can＇t be separated from financial support, which mainly comes from internal financing and external financing. Internal financing is about internal cash flow, which has a certain uncertainty because it relates to firm＇s performance closely. Some factors, such as information asymmetry, contracts friction and Market Timing, increase not only the cost of external financing, but also external financing risky. The volatility of internal financing and external financing is closely related to the change frequency of a firm＇s investment. However, the fluctuation of a firm＇s investment will cause high adjustment costs, such as hiring and lay-off costs, overtime costs, inventory costs, disruption costs and costs related to the irreversibility of many projects. Therefore, in order to reduce or even avoid the high adjustment costs, firms have to maintain a stable investment spending. We pay attention to the effect that corporate cash holdings have on a firm＇s investment and its impact on a firm＇s competitive performance in product market when a finn is trying to maintain a stable investment spending. Using the panel data of publicly listed companies in Chinese A share market from 1999 to 2011, we firstly examine whether corporate cash holdings have a smoothing effect on a firm＇s investment based on dynamic investment model with the convex adjustment costs using a two-step system GMM. And we find cash holdings have a significant smoothing effect on a firm＇s investment. When there is a negative effect of corporate financing causing insufficient fund for a firm＇s investment, a firm can draw down its cash holdings to partially or completely offset the variation of investment spending. When there is a positive effect of corporate financing causing sufficient fund for a firm＇s investment, a finn can rebuild its cash holdings. This can increase the ability to smooth future investment, and avoid the blind increase of investment spending. We further consider the smoothing effect as a possible way to affect a firm＇s competitive performance on product market. Regression analyses were conducted to study the investment smoothing effect of cash holdings on a firm＇s competitive performance. The result shows that investment smoothing is an important way to affect a firm＇s product market via corporate cash holdings and increase a firm＇s positive competitive performance. Both investment and cash holdings have a greater impact on a firm＇s competitive performance in the market. Cash holdings is an important part of corporate liquidity. Our findings enrich the theory of corporate cash holdings, and reveal an important way about how corporate cash holdings policy can influence a firm＇s product market competitive performance. These findings provide theoretical and practical implications for the publicly listed companies in China to make cash holdings policies and investment decisions.