国有企业慈善捐赠的政府行为效应

The Impacts of Government Intervention on Charitable Donation of Chinese State-owned Enterprises

国有企业是中国社会捐赠的主要贡献者之一,但已有研究未能充分揭示其开展慈善捐赠所遵循的逻辑与机制。基于数据观察和理论判断,本文认为地方经济增长目标管理制度与所有制体制约束的耦合是支配国有企业慈善捐赠行为的核心逻辑,使用2007—2018年地级市经济增长目标与国有上市公司数据进行的实证检验支持了上述认识。主要发现如下:地方经济增长目标与国有企业慈善捐赠之间存在倒U型关系,即在适度区间内地方经济增长目标会促进国有企业慈善捐赠,在超过临界值后其作用则是抑制性的;地方政府民生支出和国有企业融资约束是地方经济增长目标影响国有企业慈善捐赠的中间路径,并且地方经济增长目标与民生支出之间存在倒U关系,与融资约束之间存在U型关系;以市场化水平为代表的正式制度、以宗教传统为代表的非正式制度和城市赤字率控制均有助于扩大地方经济增长目标发挥积极作用的区间;与国有企业相比,地方经济增长目标对民营企业慈善捐赠的影响程度有限,“脱贫攻坚”政策使地方经济增长目标与国有企业慈善捐赠之间的倒U型关系变得更加陡峭。本文对于深入认知国有企业慈善捐赠面临的困境和促进我国慈善事业的健康有序发展均具有一定的启示意义。

Charitable donations contributed by state-owned enterprises(SOEs)and private enterprises are the most important sources of social donations in China.However,there are quite different rules of charitable donation behavior between the two types of enterprises,and a very important difference is that the proportion of donations from SOEs decreased earlier but increased in recent years,while this characteristic is much weaker in private enterprises.How does the charitable donation behavior of SOEs differ from that of private enterprises?For this question,a few studies on charitable donations of SOEs have not given sufficient explanations.Considering that government behavior plays a leading role in the behavior of SOEs,this paper intends to discuss the formation mechanism of the charitable donations rules of SOEs from the perspective of government behavior.Based on date observation and theoretical judgment,the research holds that the coupling of economic growth target management and enterprise ownership is the core logic that determines the charitable donation behavior of SOEs.Empirical tests which using economic growth target data of cities and listed companies from 2007 to 2018 support the above argument,and shows that there is an inverted U-shape relationship between economic growth targets and charitable donations of SOEs.At the same time,this paper holds that the transmission mechanism of economic growth target affecting the charitable donation behavior of SOEs can be summarized as follows:The moderate target will increase the government’s people’s livelihood expenditure,and the excessive target will inhibit the government’s people’s livelihood expenditure,so the relationship between the growth target and the people’s livelihood expenditure is inverted U-shaped;the moderate target will relax the financing constraints of SOEs,and the excessive target will aggravate its financing constraints,so the relationship between the growth target and the financing constraints of SOEs is U-shaped;the loose financing constraints will promote the charitable donations of SOEs,and stronger financing constraints will inhibit their charitable donations,so the relationship between the financing constraints of SOEs and charitable donations is also inverted U-shaped;the increase or decrease of government people’s livelihood expenditure and the adjustment of charitable donations of SOEs have a certain degree of synchronization,so the relationship between the two is linear.And a series of mechanism tests confirm the above analysis.The test of heterogeneity of institutional environment show that the level of marketization and religious tradition promote charitable donations of SOEs within a wider range of growth target,and regional heterogeneity analysis also shows that lower urban deficit rates can widen the range.Supplemental test reveals that the growth target has limited impact on private enterprise compared with SOEs,which means the rules of SOEs’charitable donations is different from private enterprises,and means property rights is an important variable that distinguishes the charitable donation behavior of Chinese enterprises.Furthermore,the policy of“fight against poverty”has made the inverted U-shape relationship between growth target and charitable donations of SOEs even steeper,which means the role of the“fight against poverty”policy is also a double-edged sword.The conclusions of this paper have some managerial or policy implications.Firstly,the series of documents issued by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council point out that SOEs should play a leading role in the construction of social responsibility and the development of philanthropy,but this paper shows that the ability of SOEs to play this role depends largely on the level of economic growth target rather than on its own efforts.Secondly,this paper finds that the socio-economic impact of the growth target management is two-sided,so it should be more comprehensive in assessing whether the growth target management is good or not.Thirdly,the institution,especially the informal institution,is an important way to alleviate the contradiction between growth target and charitable donations of SOEs.