重大突发公共卫生事件对企业现金持有的影响研究

Research on the impact of major public health emergency on corporate cash holdings

本文以2020年伊始发生的新冠疫情为准自然实验,采用双重差分模型考察突发公共卫生事件对企业现金持有决策的影响.研究发现,受疫情影响较为严重的企业相对其他企业显著提高现金持有水平,增持的现金主要来源于企业减少经营活动和融资活动的现金流支出.企业在调整现金持有决策过程中表现出强烈的预防性动机,即持有现金以预防未来现金流短缺影响企业正常的生产经营,而现金持有的代理动机并不明显.异质性分析表明,增持现金的行为在国有企业和非国有企业中均有表现,在市场化水平较低的地区表现得更为突出.进一步的研究发现,在疫情的冲击下,管理层并未产生明显的悲观情绪,但普遍表现出对未来发展的不确定情绪,这种不确定情绪在突发公共卫生事件影响企业现金持有过程中起到了重要的传导作用.最后,研究表明,企业在疫情期间增持现金的行为能够引起市场积极反应,进而提高企业的市场价值.

This paper takes the outbreak of the COVID-19 at the beginning of 2020 as a quasinatural experiment to study the impact of public health emergency on corporate cash holding decisions using a difference-in-difference model. We find that firms severely affected by the epidemic have significantly increased their cash holdings compared to other firms. The increased cash holdings mainly come from the reduction of cash flow expenses from operating activities and financing activities. In the process of adjusting cash holding decisions, firms have shown strong preventive motive, holding more cash to prevent future cash flow shortages from affecting the normal production and operation, while the agency motive for cash holdings is not obvious.Heterogeneity analysis shows that management’s behavior of increasing cash holdings during the epidemic period is manifested in both state-owned enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises,and is more obvious in regions with lower marketization level. Further research finds that the epidemic doesn’t cause pessimism among managers, but they express concerns about the uncertainty of firms’ future development. This uncertainty mood plays an important role in the process of public health emergency affecting firm cash holdings. Finally, research shows that the behavior of firms maintaining higher cash holdings can cause more positive market reaction.