股利平稳性、差异化分红监管政策与代理效率

Dividend Smoothing,Differential Regulation Policy of Cash Dividend and Agency Efficiency

持续稳定的现金分红反映了投资者确定性报酬的趋势,有利于投资者形成关于公司未来盈利和估值的良好预期,是衡量资本市场投资潜力的重要标志。股利平稳性可以作为事前承诺机制,降低投资者对代理冲突的预期,发挥公司治理的替代机制作用。基于中国股权结构集中的现状,探讨差异化分红监管政策下,股利平稳性对于不同类型股权代理成本和投资效率的作用。以2006年至2017年非金融类A股上市公司为样本,通过异质性随机前沿模型测算代理成本,利用部分调整模型评估股利平稳性程度。构建异质性随机前沿模型和联立方程,检验股利平稳性对代理成本和公司价值效率损失的影响。采用倾向得分匹配法评估差异化分红监管政策影响股利平稳性治理效应的作用,并加入控股股东特征和投资效率进行进一步分析。研究结果表明,中国上市公司维持股利平稳性可以缩减公司实际价值与前沿价值之间的偏差程度,但无法从总体上降低股权代理成本,并且会加剧公司治理效率损失的波动性。基于股利政策监管视角的研究发现,差异化分红监管政策有利于总体上减少中国上市公司代理效率损失,改善中国上市公司的股利不平稳程度,促使股利平稳性抑制管理费用率和资金占用,提升股利平稳性的治理效应。进一步地,公司维持股利平稳性可抑制过度投资,缓解控股股东持股比例较低、非国有产权属性和实际控制人两权分离程度较高公司的代理冲突,但会引发投资不足。基于控股股东视角,从理论上明晰股利平稳性治理效应的作用机理,丰富了长期投资者财产性收入预期的形成机制研究,说明在中国资本市场中股利平稳性的治理效应仍具有局限性。差异化分红监管政策通过缓解控股股东代理冲突发挥公司治理机制的替代作用,为中国金融监管政策的评估提供了经验证据。进一步地,股利平稳性治理效应受到控股股东持股比例和国有产权属性的约束,并取决于对投资效率的影响效果。

Consecutive and stable cash dividend reflects the future certainty of reward to investors.It is conducive to forming investors’good expectations about the future profitability and corporate value,and it is an important symbol to measure the investment potential in the capital market.Dividend smoothing can be used as a prior commitment mechanism to reduce investors’expectations of agency conflict and play an alternative mechanism of corporate governance.Based on the ownership concentration of firms in China,we studied the effect of dividend smoothing on different types of equity agency cost and investment efficiency under differential regulation policy of cash dividend.Taking the 2006-2017 years Ashare listed non-financial companies as the research samples,this study computed the agency cost through heterogeneous stochastic frontier model,and evaluated the degree of dividend smoothing by partial adjustment model.We test the influence of dividend smoothing on agency cost and company value efficiency loss through constructing heterogeneous stochastic frontier model and structural equation model.We used the propensity score matching method to evaluate the function of the governance effects of differential regulation policy of cash dividend on dividend smoothing,and conducted further analysis by adding the factors of the controlling shareholder characteristics and investment efficiency.The results show that dividend smoothing of listed firms may reduce the degree of deviation between the actual corporate value and the frontier value,but it can’t reduce their equity agency cost,and aggravates the fluctuation of the loss of corporate governance efficiency.The study on the cash dividend regulation policy finds that the differential regulation policy of cash dividend is helpful to improve the total agency efficiency,relieve the corporate dividend instability,and cause the direct governance effects of dividend smoothing to restrain management expense ratio or occupying of funds to be remarkably positive.We also find that dividend smoothing can restrain overinvestment,alleviate agency conflict of listed firms with low controlling shareholder ownership,non-state-owned property right or high separation of control rights and cash flow rights,but it also will aggravate the degree of underinvestment.In this study,the function mechanism of dividend smoothing governance effect from the perspective of the controlling shareholder is clarified theoretically,this enriches the study of the formation mechanism of long-term investors’property income expectation,and shows that the governance effect of dividend smoothing in China’s capital market still has limitations.The study shows that differential regulation policy of cash dividend plays an alternative role of corporate governance mechanism by easing agent conflict of the controlling shareholder,which provides empirical evidence for the evaluation of financial regulation policy in China.Further,the effect of dividend smoothing control is constrained by the shareholding ratio of the controlling shareholder and the attribute of state-owned property rights,and depends on the effect of the impact on investment efficiency.