非经济动因可引致企业粘性成本行为吗——基于社会成本理论及中国市场背景的实证分析

The Effect of Non-economic Factors on Asymmetric Cost Behavior: Evidence from Chinese Listed Companies

现有研究主要从调整成本、管理者预期和代理成本等经济动因分析企业粘性成本行为的形成,而少有文献探讨非经济因素是否可导致企业粘性成本行为。本文首次在粘性成本行为成因的探讨中引入社会成本这一非经济动因,并结合福利经济学社会成本理论对其形成粘性成本行为的机制进行阐释。同时,基于我国的制度背景,本文以企业职工福利和社会捐赠支出等作为社会成本的研究变量,实证性考察我国市场环境中的社会成本这一非经济动因对上市公司粘性成本行为的作用。研究结果表明,非经济动因确可引致企业粘性成本行为,承担社会成本更多的企业,其成本粘性程度显著更高,且该影响机制区别于其他经济动因对粘性成本行为的影响机制而独立存在。

Prior studies have documented the sticky cost behavior and have predominantly explained this phenomenon with economic factors such as adjust cost, mangers＇ expectation and agency prob- lem. Drawing on social cost theory in welfare economics, we argue that sticky cost behavior is driven not only by the economic factors, but also by the non-economic factors such as social cost which could cause a shift in cost asymmetry away from the economic optimal level. Comparing the different cost management objective between economic optimization and social welfare optimization, we show theoretically that social cost actually leads to asymmetric cost behavior of firms. Based on the data of Chinese listed firms in the transforming economy market, we use employee benefits and cor- porate public welfare donation to measure the social cost of firms and investigate the effect of non-economic factors on asymmetric cost behavior. Controlling the economic factors, this paper sheds lights on the relationship between the social cost and the sticky cost behavior of firms. In accordance with the hypotheses, we find that the social cost of the firms has positive correlation with the degree of cost stickiness. Moreover, within the transforming economy mar- ket of China, the political connections may also induce the social cost of firms and lead to the sticky cost behavior. We empirically test the hypotheses and find that the state owned enterprises which pay more attention to social welfare objective than private enter- prises present a larger degree of cost stickiness, especially the state owned enterprises affiliated to the central government. The pro- portion of state owned shares of a firm also aligns with the degree of the cost stickiness. This result illustrates that the firm have more social cost due to political connection presents a larger degree of cost stickiness, also verify the social cost is a distinctive factor from the economic factors, suggesting that the social cost provides an ad- ditional explanation for sticky cost behavior.