“乡音”能否降低公司代理成本?——基于方言视角的研究

Can “Local Accent”Reduce Agency Cost?——A Study Based on the Perspective of Dialects

本文利用手工收集的高管出生地数据,结合《中国语言地图集:汉语方言卷》,首次识别出董事长和总经理家乡所属的方言种类,并基于方言所代表的地域文化背景和社会认同理论,剖析了董事长和总经理的方言一致性对双方互动关系的影响机理,以2008—2014年A股上市公司为研究样本实证检验了方言一致性对公司代理成本的影响。结果发现,董事长和总经理的方言一致性能够显著降低代理成本,而且一种方言的使用地域范围越窄,这种作用越显著。在采用DID方法和工具变量解决内生性问题以及在控制了非文化因素的影响之后,方言一致性能降低代理成本这一结论依然成立。进一步的研究还发现,方言认同功能只在民营企业中显著,在国有企业中作用不明显;在异乡经营的企业及在人口净流入的地区,方言一致性降低代理成本的作用更强。本文基于单一国家的纯净数据深入剖析了中国独特的"同乡抱团"文化现象背后的公司治理作用,是对"文化与金融"微观研究的丰富和补充,也为市场各方洞悉我国独特的文化传统对经济发展的规制作用提供了新的实证依据。

This paper successfully identifies the dialects spoken by the chairman of the board and CEO respectively by combining the data of executives＂ birthplaces and ＂Atlas of Chinese Language＂, and systematically analyzes the effect mechanism of the consistent of the dialect spoken by chairman of the board and CEO to the interactive relationship between them basing on the Sapir - Whorf hypothesis and social identity theory, and then empirically test the influence of such consistency to the agency cost using the data from China＇ s A Share Listed Company from 2008 to 2014. The results show that if chairman and CEO come from the same dialect area, the firm will have lower agency cost, which becomes more significant when the types of dialect are classified finer. After controlling the influence of non-culture factor, the dialects still plays a role. Further study finds that dialect identification can reduce agency cost only in private enterprise and work more powerful in the firm whose chairman is away from his hometown and in the area with population inflow. This paper thoroughly analyzes the influence of Chinese culture on corporate governance based on the pure data from single country, which supplements the microscopic research in ＂culture and finance＂ and provides new evidences for market participants to insight into the influences of Chinese traditional culture on economic development.