国内贸易网络、地理距离与供应商本地化

Domestic Trade Network,Geographical Distance and Localization of Suppliers

灵活、有效的供应商关系管理对企业正常运行具有关键意义。以上市公司总部搬迁为冲击,本文考察了总部迁移之后供应商地理分布的调整反应。通过内生供应商选择决策,本文理论研究发现,总部迁移后供应商更替决策取决于新供应商搜寻成本与旧供应商维系成本的权衡比较。基于2001—2017年间中国上市公司的供应商-客户匹配数据,本文实证结果发现:(1)总部搬迁企业的确更有可能发生供应关系变更,且这一效果在远距离搬迁中更为显著。(2)新供应关系搜寻效率越高,企业越有可能替换原有贸易伙伴;与旧贸易伙伴的关系粘性越低,供应关系更替概率也越高;对中间投入品供应商依赖度低的企业也更可能更换新供应商。(3)由于贸易伙伴选择依赖于地理距离的远近,导致供应关系呈现出高度本地化现象。本文研究揭示了在经营环境不确定性风险加剧时供应关系及时调整的重要性。

As the modern trade network becomes increasingly complicated,effective and flexible supplier relationship management is critical to the business operation and performance of firms.By introducing headquarter relocation as an event study,we aim at investigating how the change in geographic distance affects the choice of trade partners in the domestic trade network.We develop a theoretical framework based on the incomplete contract model of Antras Helpman(2004),and our model shows that the change of trade partners essentially depends on the trade-off between the search cost of new suppliers and the maintenance cost of the old ones.Once their headquarters have been relocated,firms have to pay higher costs to maintain their business partnership with their old suppliers as the geographic distance becomes larger.Longer distance not only causes higher transportation costs of intermediate goods provided by distant suppliers,but also leads to higher costs to effectively monitor and control inputs of their old suppliers(Giroud,2013).Hence,it is more likely for firms to replace their old suppliers once maintenance cost increases after relocation.On the other hand,firms have to pay search costs to find suitable new trade partners due to information frictions and mismatches of buyer-seller relationships(Allen,2014;Chaney,2014;Antras et al.,2017;Bernard et al.,2019).It often takes time for firms to seek potential new trade partners in the local market due to lack of knowledge.By endogenizing the decision of supplier selection,the equilibrium solution shows firms are more likely to replace their old suppliers if they have a higher degree of reliance on headquarter intensity,higher search efficiency,and a lower maintenance cost.Taking the headquarter relocation of listed firms as the external shock,we further examine the response and adjustment of suppliers'geographic distribution after headquarter relocation.Based on the customer-supplier matching data of Chinese listed firms from 2001 to 2017,we document that during the sample period,there are 183 listed firms who ever experienced headquarter relocation,among which 113 firms relocated their headquarters to other provincial-level regions.By using the 183 firms with headquarter relocation as the treatment group,we adopt the staggered difference-in-differences estimation strategy to causally identify how firms adjust their trade partners after relocation.We find that firms who relocate their headquarters are more likely to experience business relationship replacement,and this effect is more significant in long-distance relocation.In detail,our estimation demonstrates that compared with the control group,headquarter relocation causes the overlapping ratio of business relationships of the treatment group to decrease by 12 percent,which means that firms replace at least one business partner after relocation.In addition,we show that if firms have higher search efficiency for new business relationships or less sticky business relationships with their old partners,the probability of replacing their original partners will also be higher.We also show the importance of headquarter service in selecting trade partners,and find that firms with a lower degree of reliance on intermediate inputs are also more likely to select new suppliers.It is worth mentioning that headquarter relocation decision of firms can be endogenous,which probably causes our empirical findings to be biased.To address this concern,we further use the guidance attitude of local industrial policy as the IV of headquarter relocation.The IV estimation shows that preferential local industrial policy guidance does encourage firms to relocate their headquarters to cities with better policy treatment,and our main findings still remain robust.We contribute to the literature by showing the importance of search cost and maintenance cost in the domestic trade network(Chaney,2014;Bernard et al.,2019;Dhyne et al.,2021).By using headquarter relocation as an event study,we also show how the choice of trade partners depends on the geographical distance(Anderson van Wincoop,2004;Bisztray et al.,2018),which consequently leads to the endogenous formation of a domestic trade network.In general,this study reveals the importance of timely adjustment and effective monitoring of business relationships during volatile times with high uncertainty and risk in the business environment.