外部大股东能促进企业创新吗——基于退出威胁视角的实证分析

Can Outside Blockholders Promote Corporate Innovation?An Empirical Analysis from the Perspective of Exit Threats

传统文献重点关注外部大股东发挥公司治理作用的"用手投票"和"用脚投票"行为,而对退出威胁的公司治理效应关注不足。本文检验了外部大股东退出威胁与企业创新的关系,分析了退出威胁影响企业创新的作用机理,并考察了外生流动性冲击在其中发挥的调节效应。研究发现:外部大股东退出威胁可以有效地促进企业的创新投入和产出,在控制内生性问题之后依然稳健;长期战略型外部大股东退出威胁的治理效应更为显著,而短期逐利型外部大股东退出威胁的治理效应则较弱;退出威胁通过减少控股股东掏空行为对企业创新产生治理效应;放松卖空管制可以增强退出威胁对企业创新的治理效应,而加强大股东减持管制则会削弱退出威胁对企业创新的治理效应。本文从退出威胁的角度验证了外部大股东公司治理作用的有效性,为外部大股东参与公司决策和完善公司治理提供了参考依据。

The traditional corporate governance literature has focused on the role of outside blockholders’ blind voting, lacking concerns on the effect of corporate governance on their exit threat. Recently, the international financial and accounting circles have formed some research results around the exit threat. According to the exit threat governance theory, the exit threat of blockholders can effectively alleviate the agency problem. Threat is an effective means of communication during the game, which helps to promote negotiation and reach a consensus during the process of the game. Before blind voting, outside blockholders often conduct exit threat as a bargaining chip for negotiations with insiders. Only when the exit threat is invalid will the outside blockholders choose bind voting. In reality, many cases can be introduced to interpret the governance chain of outside blockholders. However, inconsistent with the practical application of corporate governance, the academic literature focusing on the exit threat of outside blockholders is relatively rare.On the one hand, this paper believes that outside blockholders have the motivation to promote companies to engage in innovative activities. Compared with controlling shareholders and the management, information asymmetry faced by outside blockholders is much more serious. To avoid potential infringement of their legitimate rights and interests, outside blockholders are more willing to participate in corporate governance. Since the outside blockholders hold more stocks, they can obtain the benefits brought by the increase in the company’s value, which can be used to make up for the cost of supervision. Therefore, outside blockholders have strong motivations to actively participate in corporate governance, and they will not choose to "free ride" like small and medium shareholders. Based on the above, the growth of corporate value is particularly important for outside blockholders. Innovation is an important indicator of corporate value evaluation, companies that are with strong innovation capabilities and innovation performance tend to have high market valuations. The outside blockholders may choose to pay more attention to long-term projects that can ensure the company’s future continuous income, which makes them more supportive of the company’s innovation strategies. On the other hand, this paper believes that the exit threat of outside blockholders can reduce the tunneling behavior of controlling shareholders to promote corporate innovation. In emerging markets like China, the second type of agency problem is particularly prominent, and incidents of controlling shareholders tunneling listed companies happen from time to time. Controlling shareholders will make use of their own control merits and information advantages to tunnel the resources of listed companies. However, corporate innovation requires long-term and continuous capital and human investment, which require companies’ great ability to allocate resources. The opportunistic behavior of the controlling shareholder will tunnel the limited resources of the company, making the resources needed for corporate innovation becomes increasingly scarce. The exit threat of outside blockholders can effectively curb the controlling shareholders’ tunneling of the listed company, reduce their holdings of funds and benefit transfer behavior, which also helps to ensure the capital needs for corporate innovation, and promotes the development of corporate innovation activities This paper introduces the definition of threat from social psychology into the research of corporate governance, discusses the effect of corporate governance on exit threat of outside blockholders from the perspective of corporate innovation, and examines the mechanism of outside blockholders’ exit threat on corporate innovation, and analyzes the impact of exogenous liquidity shocks such as loosening the control of short selling and strengthening the regulation of reducing blockholders’ shares. We find that outside blockholders’ exit threat effectively promotes innovation input and output, which is robust after considering endogenous problems. The governance effect of long-term strategic outside blockholders’ exit threat is more significant, while the short-term profit-seeking outside blockholders’ exit threat has weaker governance effect. Exit threats show a governance effect on innovation by mitigating the myopic behavior of controlling shareholders’ tunneling behavior. Loosening the control of short selling can enhance the governance effect of exit threat on corporate innovation, while strengthening the regulation of reducing blockholders’ shares has the contrary effects. This paper confirms the positive effect of outside blockholders on corporate innovation, which is a beneficial supplement to the blockholder activism view pursued by the Chicago School. In addition, it reveals the path through which the pressure of the capital market is transmitted to the real economy, and verifies the positive effect of outside blockholders on the company’s value from the side view.This research is of great help for the theoretical and practical circles to recognize how outside blockholders can play the role of corporate governance, expand the theoretical system of corporate governance model research in the era of diversified equity, and brings a wealth of policy implications for outside blockholders to play the governance role in Chinese listed companies. First, the structure of inside and outside blockholders needs to be rationally optimized, and long-term strategic outside blockholders need to be actively introduced. It is necessary to proceed to implement mixed-ownership reforms, Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect program, Shanghai-London Stock Connect program, Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect program, and other systems to improve the corporate governance structure, and attract more outside blockholders to participate in the governance of listed companies. Public listed companies should promote the shareholder activism concept, and actively engage in the communication with long-term strategic outside blockholders, and give full play to the strategic alliance effect of long-term strategic outside blockholders and the role of corporate governance. Second, outside blockholders should rationally use exit threat to seek their legitimate rights and interests. Threat is an effective means of negotiation in social psychology. When the blind voting is invalid, outside blockholders can try to communicate with the management and other departments through the exit threat, which can be used in corporate governance and financial decision-making to reach a consensus, and improve the efficiency of corporate governance, thereby enhancing the value of the company.