股权激励对企业不同类型金融资产配置的影响研究

Influence of Equity Incentive on Financial Asset Allocation of Different Types

近年来,企业金融化趋势备受关注,但关于企业金融化动因和结果的研究结论并不一致,其原因在于缺乏对企业金融化形式的有效识别。本文利用2009—2020年中国沪深A股非金融上市公司样本,实证研究了股权激励对企业不同类型金融资产配置的影响。研究发现:股权激励显著促进了上市公司交易性金融资产配置,但抑制了投资性金融资产配置,这说明股权激励有利于促进企业“储蓄动机”的金融化,同时抑制投机动机的金融化。中介效应检验发现:企业科技创新行为在股权激励影响不同类型金融资产配置中发挥了中介效应。另外,在管理者无金融背景、高融资约束、低股权集中度的企业中,股权激励对不同类型金融资产配置造成的差异化影响更为显著。本文研究对理解企业金融化的决策动机、规范和治理企业金融化行为具有理论和现实意义。

Since 2008, due to the deterioration of international trade environment and rising economic uncertainties,the development of entity enterprises encounters difficulties. In this context, the trend of corporate financialization is obvious. There are two opposing views on the motivation and consequences of corporate financialization. One view holds that the financialization of enterprises with speculative motives will affect the development of enterprises’ main business and even cause potential systemic financial risks. The other one holds that for the precautionary motive, enterprises can ease financing constraints through financializing reserve liquidity, which is conducive to the development of entity enterprises.There are obviously two shortcomings for existing studies. First, there are different motivations behind the allocation of different types of financial assets in the process of financialization. However, existing research lacks an effective identification of the allocation types of financial assets. Second, the financialization behaviour of enterprises is dominated by managers, and the agency motivation of managers determines the choice of specific financialization forms. In existing studies, there is no one examining the influence of equity incentive on different types of financial assets during the financialization process.Therefore, this paper, based on the data of Chinese A-share listed companies in Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange from 2009 to 2020, systematically investigates the influence of managers’ equity incentives on the allocation of different types of financial assets. The empirical research shows that managers’ equity incentives significantly inhibits the allocation of investment financial assets but promotes the allocation of transaction financial assets.This indicates that equity incentive can mitigate the manager agency conflict, restrain the financialization of enterprises’ speculative motivation, and promote the financialization of enterprises with precautionary motivation. These conclusions remain true after endogeneity control and robustness tests. The mediating effect test shows that the technological innovation behaviour of enterprises plays a mediating role in the process of equity incentive influencing the allocation of different types of financial assets. In addition, this paper also finds that the influence of equity incentives on the choice of different types of financial assets is more significant in enterprise with managers lacking financial background, higher degree of financing constraints and lower degree of equity concentration.Compared with existing literature, this paper has carried out extensive work in the following three aspects. First, it reveals that managers will have different investment choices for different types of financial assets based on the purpose of technological innovation from the perspective of manager agency. This provides a unified analysis framework for the motivations and results of the corporate financialization, and enriches research on the impact of corporate financialization.Second, it examines the influence of equity incentives on financial investment decisions, which enriches research on the economic consequences of equity incentives. Third, it reveals the mediating effect of enterprises’ technological innovation behaviour in the financial investment decisions, which provides new evidence for the role of enterprises’ technological innovation behaviour in the financial decision. This paper deepens the understanding of the motivation of corporate financialization and provides the decision-making basis for enterprises’ financialization decisions and the external supervision.