东道国金融结构与中国企业海外投资不足:缓解还是加剧?

Financial Structure of Host Country and Overseas Under-Investment of Chinese Enterprises:Weakening or Intensifying?

基于2003-2018年中国企业海外投资数据,文章拓展Richardson(2006)模型测算中国企业海外投资不足的样本及其程度,并实证检验了东道国金融结构对企业海外投资不足的影响及其作用渠道。估计结果发现,东道国金融结构越是趋向于市场主导型,越可显著缓解中国海外投资不足的程度;随着企业海外投资不足的加剧,东道国金融结构市场化程度的提高对其缓解作用逐渐增强。异质性分组检验还表明,若投资企业为非国有企业、制造业企业、海外并购企业或者选择在非"一带一路"沿线国家投资的企业,上述缓解作用更为显著。基于有调节的中介效应模型进一步发现,东道国市场主导型金融结构主要通过限制融资约束来缓解中国企业的海外投资不足,而企业所在地日臻改善的制度环境对融资约束这一中介变量发挥了负向的调节作用。

Investment efficiency is a significant indicator to measure the reasonableness and effectiveness of corporate investment behavior.As China is increasingly involved in global market,how to improve the efficiency of overseas investment by Chinese enterprises has become a core issue in the resource allocation of Chinese enterprises.Affected by uncertainties such as internal governance and external environment,the difference in the expected return on investment w ill cause the derivation of the actual level of investment from the optimal level of investment,namely,the low-efficiency state of over-investment or under-investment.Adopting the overseas investment data of Chinese enterprises from 2003 to 2018,this paper calculates the degree of overseas under-investment samples by expanding Richardson model,and then test w hat and how financial structure of host country affects them.The empirical findings indicate that the more the financial structure of host country tends to be market-oriented,the more can it significantly alleviate the overseas under-investment degree of Chinese enterprises.With the increase of the overseas under-investment level,the market-oriented financial structure of host country has gradually reinforced its mitigative effect.When the enterprises fall into category of non-state-ow ned,manufacturing,overseas M&A or investing the countries not along"Belt and Road",the mitigative effect becomes more significant.By using the moderated intermediary effect model,it further show s that the market-oriented financial structure of host country can alleviate overseas under-investment of Chinese enterprises mainly by restraining their financial constraints,w hile the increasingly improved institutional environment of the enterprises’location has played a negative role in regulating the intermediary variable of financing constraints.Compared to existing studies,this paper tries to innovate in three aspects.First,unlike the research conducted by Fan et al.(2016),w hich measures the efficiency of overseas investment at the national level,this paper pioneers in the calculation of overseas investment efficiency at the corporate level.Second,w ith regard to measuring the key indicator of the efficiency of corporate overseas investment,in this paper enterprise heterogeneity theory and the gravity model are combined to extend the model proposed by Richardson(2006),w hich for the first time expanded the measurement of insufficient corporate investment into the level of cross-border investment.Finally,w hile examining how the financial structure of the host country affects the insufficient investment of Chinese enterprises,this paper attempts to discuss its functionary channels from the level of restriction on corporate financing and the institutional environment of w here an enterprise is located.The findings in this paper w ill provide guidance for improving the efficiency of overseas investment by Chinese enterprises.From the perspective of enterprises,they need to take into full account the financial environment of the host country,including both the profitability and risk factors of the target investment project and the external restraints from the environment of the project.From the perspective of the government,in case of a low level of market-oriented financial structure in the host country,the home country ought to provide a complete set of market services as a helpful addition.