经济政策不确定性、目标设定与棘轮效应

Economic Policy Uncertainty, Business Target Setting and Ratcheting

本文采用中国上市公司披露的年度经营业绩目标数据以及Baker等(2016)构建的经济政策不确定性指数,研究经济政策不确定性对企业业绩目标棘轮效应的影响。研究发现:经济政策不确定性越高,企业设定业绩目标的棘轮效应越弱;并且棘轮效应的不对称性越小。机制分析的结果表明,经济政策不确定性通过降低历史业绩的决策有用性,促使企业提高对高质量同行信息、内部经营计划的依赖程度,从而导致业绩目标棘轮效应下降。在考虑样本自选择问题、内生性问题以及排除替代性解释后,上述结论依然成立。本文为业绩目标设定的研究领域提供了一个“宏观-微观”影响机制的全新视角,并拓展了关于政策不确定性经济后果方面的研究,有助于我们加深理解宏观经济环境对微观企业行为的影响。

This paper studies the impact of economic policy uncertainty on ratcheting effect of corporate performance targets by using the annual operating performance target data disclosed by Listed Companies in China and the economic policy uncertainty index constructed by Baker et al(2016).The research finds that the higher the uncertainty of economic policy, the weaker the ratcheting effect of setting performance targets, and the smaller the asymmetry of ratcheting effect.The results of mechanism analysis confirm the causal inference, indicating that the economic policy uncertainty, by reducing the decision-making usefulness of historical performance, prompts enterprises to increase their dependence on high-quality peer information and internal business plan, thus leading to the decline of target ratcheting.After considering the sample self-selection problem, endogeneity problem and the exclusion of alternative explanations, the above conclusions are still valid.This study provides a new perspective on the“macro-micro”impact mechanism of the existing literature on target setting, and expands the literature of policy uncertainty, which helps us to deepen our understanding of the shaping of the macro-economic environment on the enterprises’ behavioral decisions.