政府补助是否强化了战略性新兴产业的成本粘性?

Do Government Subsidies Reinforce the Cost Stickiness of Strategic Emerging Industries?

战略性新兴产业是重点支持产业,政府的补助对战略性新兴产业有何影响呢?文章以2007-2016年战略性新兴产业内企业的财务数据为样本,探讨政府补助影响成本粘性的原因及其作用机理。借鉴ABJ(2003)模型,分别以营业成本和销管费用衡量成本粘性,研究发现,政府补助显著增强了成本粘性。这一关系在融资约束较低条件下尤其明显,而在营业收入连续下降时无显著变化,这表明政府补助通过管理层代理问题增强了成本粘性,但没有证据支持调整成本和管理层乐观预期的观点。采用销管费用率和过度投资衡量代理问题时,中介效应结果支持了"政府补助通过管理层代理问题增强成本粘性"这一路径。文章进一步比较了不同的企业和行业环境下政府补助对成本粘性的影响,结果表明,政府补助通过管理层代理问题增加成本粘性主要体现在国有企业中。此外,相比其他战略性新兴产业,地方政府对光伏产业的过度干预使得政府补助对成本粘性的增强影响在光伏产业中更显著。文章的研究结论为政府合理实施战略性新兴产业的产业政策提供了借鉴。

Independent directors are characterized by ＂native＂ risk-aversion effects during their work,but it doesn＇t attract enough academic attention on how characteristics of independent directors affect corporate risk-taking in China for a long time. As we know, political connections among independent directors are common phenomena in China＇s capital market, and it has exerted widespread and far-reaching impacts on the performance of independent directors.Based on the above,the article chooses political connections in transitional economy as a breakpoint,and uses A-share listed companies between 2007 and 2014 as samples to examine whether political connections of independent directors can make corporations take more risks.In particular,we measure political connections based on whether independent directors have the government background or act as NPC/CPC representatives and CPPCC members,and use accounting earnings（cash earnings）adjusted by the industry-year average as the proxy variable of the corporate risk-taking level.The empirical evidence shows that political connections of independent directors enhance risk-taking significantly.It indicates that when the number of independent directors with political connections increases,the corporate risk-taking level rises accordingly.Moreover,there is a moderating effect of demographic characteristics on the relation,which shows that when the education background becomes better and the female ratio increases,the enhancing degree of the corporate risk-taking level arising from political connections decreases,but the age doesn’t have significant impacts.Additional tests reveal that corporate risk-taking plays a partial mediation role on the relation between political connections of independent directors and operation performance.All of these mean that political connections can weaken risk aversion effects of independent directors;moreover,the relation is limited by demographic characteristics like the education background and the gender.Compared with the previous literature,the theoretical contributions of this article contain the following three points.First,the existing literature mainly analyzes the role of senior executives or CEOs in corporate risk-taking（Pathan,2009;Yu,et al.,2013）,and ignores independent directors.In fact,independent directors are more risk-sensitive in the decision-making process（Yu,et al.,2010）,thus this article enriches the theory of corporate risk-taking.Second,the scope of political connections is limited to specific groups such as the CEO,the chairman,the board member,etc.（Fan,et al.,2007;Yu and Pan,2008）.The main body of political connections is extended to the independent director level in this article,which will help us to learn how the influence of political connections changes with the main body change.Finally,the article provides direct evidence on risk aversion of independent directors,which are quite different from indirect evidence in existing empirical literature.Above all,the article incorporates political connections and demographic characteristics into the analysis framework of how independent directors work,and is helpful for the comprehension on functions of independent directors in China’s context.According to the conclusion,we should pay attention to these following points in future：（1）Whether selecting independent directors with political connections depends on the demand of corporate development,for example,enterprises in quick development need a higher risk-taking level,so hiring independent directors with political connections will reduce frictions when communicating with top management.（2）Enterprises should take demographic characteristics into consideration when selecting independent directors.Based on the above discovery,if there is a need to decrease corporate risk-taking,enterprises can hire independent directors with higher education and female gender.（3）Independent directors don’t always play a＂vase＂role.Although listed companies are required to limit the proportion of independent directors to1/3,there are still disparities among independent directors of the same proportion.Therefore,we should consider the tenure characteristics in the employment process of independent directors.