Do Institutional Investors Drive Financialization of Real Sectors?

The trend that China's economy is being"off the real to the virtual"is a typical fact in recent years.A large number of firms invest and hold financial asscts,the investing and profit-generating channels of the real sectors are becoming more and more financialized.By utilizing sample of Chinese A-share manufacturing firms from the year of 2007 to 2015,and using fixed effect model,this paper investigates the driving factor of the financialization of real sectors.The results show that:(1)institutional investors,overall,drive the financialization of real sectors;(2)instiutional investors are heterogeneous,that is,long-term institutional investors do not show a significant correlation with the financialization of real sectors;however,short-term institutional investors significantly drive the financialization of real sectors;(3)the results.of further investigation show that the driving effect of institutional investors on financialization is more significant in state owned firms than that in private firms.The findings have implications as follows:guiding the investment behavior of institutional investors,leading financial sector to serve the real economy,promoting financial structure reform.