官员晋升激励与企业负债——地级市层面的经验分析

Officials’ Promotion Incentives and Firm Leverage: Empirical Evidence from the City-Level Data

政府官员对企业经济行为的影响一直是个重要的研究话题,近年来,我国企业高杠杆的问题引起了理论界和实务界的普遍关心。基于全国234个地级市的数据,本文从动态和静态两个角度考察地方官员晋升激励对上市公司资产负债率的影响。结果表明,官员晋升激励显著影响了企业负债率。从静态负债率来看,官员晋升激励越强,企业负债率水平越高;从负债率动态的调整过程来看,官员晋升激励阻碍了企业负债率的调整速度,并使企业资产负债率偏离目标水平的程度增大。由此形成了企业静态负债率长期偏高的结果,并且上述现象在国有企业和市场化程度较低的地区更加显著。进一步的分析显示,官员晋升激励主要是通过增加企业短期债务比重而影响企业负债率的,且在后果上加大了企业财务风险,使企业更可能陷入财务困境。本文的研究丰富了公司资本结构影响因素的已有文献,提供了政府官员晋升激励如何影响企业经济活动的证据,为解释中国企业债务问题提供了参考和借鉴。

Under the current system of official assessment and appointment,local officials play an important role in regional economic development.Studies have shown that local officials will strive to increase the GDP of their region in order to seek political promotion.Zhou Li an(2007)calls it a“promotional tournament”.Although this system has contributed to the rapid growth of the Chinese economy in the past,it has also brought about negative problems such as overcapacity and excessive investment.The leverage ratio of the Chinese corporate sector has increased year by year,by the end of 2015,the leverage ratio of non-financial enterprises has reached more than 130%,which has caused widespread concern in the theoretical,practical and regulatory circles.So,is the promotion incentive for officials associated with the high leverage and high debt of the current Chinese corporate sector?Does it have an impact on the changes and adjustments in the capital structure of Chinese companies?This article attempts to answer this question from the perspective of the promotion incentives of officials.Taking the listed companies from 2002 to 2015 as a sample,we manually collected data from 234 prefecture-level cities across the country,and examined the impact of local officials'promotion incentives on the capital structure of local listed companies from both dynamic and static perspectives.Our research found that the promotional motivation of officials has significantly affected the capital structure of enterprises.Specifically,for the static results,when the incentives for promotion of officials are stronger,the debt ratio of enterprises has risen remarkably.For the dynamic adjustment process of debt ratio,Our research shows that the promotion incentives of officials hinder the adjustment of the capital structure of enterprises,and increase the degree of deviation of the capital structure of enterprises from the optimal level.This phenomenon leads to the long-term high debt ratio of enterprises,and the above impact of official promotion incentives on capital structure is more obvious in state-owned enterprises and regions with less marketization.Finally,further analysis find that the promotion incentives for officials mainly affect the capital structure of enterprises by increasing the short-term liabilities of enterprises,and increase the financial risks of enterprises in the aftermath,making enterprises more likely to fall into financial difficulties.Compared with the previous literature,the research contribution of this paper reflected in several aspects.First,as a core issue of corporate finance,the decision of corporate capital structure has always been a hot topic in academic research.However,existing research mainly discusses factors affecting corporate capital structure from the industry and company level(Frank and Goyal,2008).Different from the existing research,this paper analyzes the impact of local officials'promotion incentives on the capital structure of enterprises based on the macro perspective,which is a useful supplement to the existing literature.Second,unlike the mature markets in the West,as a new and transitional country,China's economic development has a government-led nature.Local government officials can intervene in regional economies through various means(Chen et al.,2011;Zhao Yong and Wei Houkai,2015).This paper provides empirical evidence from the perspective of corporate capital structure to understand how government officials'promotion motivation affects business operations.Finally,this study also has policy implications.Due to the rising leverage of Chinese enterprises in recent years,“de-leveraging”has become one of the tasks of the supply-side reform in China.The research in this paper provides a new perspective for explaining the formation of high leverage in Chinese enterprises,which will help regulatory authorities to promote enterprises to reduce leverage in an orderly manner in the future,prevent and resolve the occurrence of corporate debt risks,and curb the negative intervention of local officials on enterprises.