年报问询函对超额现金持有水平影响研究

The Study of Annual Report Comment Letters on Excess Cash Holdings

证券监管机构针对上市公司财务报告中的问题所发出的年报问询函,能够影响企业的超额现金持有水平。笔者以2015—2018年中国大陆A股上市公司为研究对象,采用OLS回归、Heckman两阶段模型、PSM+DID模型实证检验了年报问询函对超额现金持有水平的影响。研究结果显示:年报问询函能够减少超额现金持有;在管理层权力较低的企业和市场化程度较高的地区,年报问询函对超额现金持有水平的影响较为稳健;当年报问询函包含的问题数量越多、年报问询函需要中介机构发表核查意见时,年报问询函降低超额现金持有的力度较强;年报问询函通过缓解信息不对称降低超额现金持有。本研究将针对年报问询函经济后果的学术探讨拓展到企业超额现金持有研究领域,揭示了年报问询函对超额现金持有水平的影响,研究结论丰富了有关年报问询函经济后果和超额现金持有影响因素方面的相关文献,为证券监管机构、公司管理层正确认识并充分发挥年报问询函的监管作用提供了理论依据。

Security regulators issue annual report comment letters on problems in the financial reports of listed companies.Annual report comment letters can affect corporates’excess cash holdings.Based on the data of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2015 to 2018,this study investigates the impact of annual report comment letters on excess cash holdings using the OLS regression,Heckman two-stage model and PSM+DID model.The empirical results show that annual report comment letters decrease excess cash holdings.This reduction effect is more pronounced for companies with less management power and regions with higher level of marketization.Moreover,we find this effect is stronger when annual report comment letters contain more questions and need to be verified by the intermediary.At last,we find information asymmetry is the mechanism through which annual report comment letters reduce excess cash holdings.Our study expands the economic consequences of annual report comment letters at the level of corporates’excess cash holdings.The conclusions clarify the impact of annual report comment letters on excess cash holdings enrich the literature on annual report comment letters’economic consequences and the affecting factors of excess cash holdings,and also have implications for regulators and managers to understand and make full use of annual report comment letters.