机构投资者合作如何促进公司创新?——基于基金网络社区结构的研究视角

How Does Institutional Investor Cooperation Promote Corporate Innovation?——Perspective from Mutual Fund Network Community

“公司大股东话语权过强,机构投资者话语权不足”是阻碍单独机构投资者参与公司治理的突出问题,而机构投资者之间的合作行为能够有效地提升治理意愿、强化治理水平。本文首次从理论和实证上分析了机构投资者通过信息交流合作来强化公司治理的作用机制和经济效果。本文构造了一个序贯博弈模型均衡来刻画共同基金的行为机制,理论结果显示基金合作会形成具有社区分布特征的信息网络结构,处于同一社区中的关联配对基金会对持股公司形成合作治理关系,从而提升双方的治理意愿与治理效果。进而本文基于2007—2021年上市公司创新数据和基金持股数据进行了实证分析,结果显示基金在网络社区结构下的治理合作关系能够显著激励公司未来的创新活动。进一步的分析发现:第一,配对基金之间的社区合作关系呈现出独特的治理效应,这一效应不能被以往的网络信息度和抱团持股指标所解释,在考虑因果识别以及稳健性检验后结论依然成立;第二,本文在社区结构中识别了两类具体的基金合作行为,即“共同调研”和“同步交易”,两者分别代表机构投资者通过“用手投票”和“用脚投票”渠道的合作治理机制;第三,基金的主动监督意愿会影响合作治理的效果,有更高监督意愿的基金会更积极频繁地参与共同调研活动,对公司创新活动有更好的治理效果。本文研究有助于理解机构投资者治理机制、推进公司治理,并为资本市场高质量发展提供有益的政策启示。

Under the current governance reform goal of innovation-driven high-quality development in China,mobilizing institutional investor shareholders to actively participate in corporate governance is an important incentive mechanism.However,due to the“strong speaking right of controlling shareholders and weak speaking right of institutional investors”in the capital market,the participation of institutional investors in corporate governance in China still confronts many restrictions.For institutional investors with low shareholding,their institutional ability in information collection,data analysis,and governance organization brings little feedback and effect.However,institutional investors can choose to jointly cooperate in corporate governance,which may alleviate the problem of insufficient shareholder rights of individual investors and stre ngthen the total governance effect.Therefore,this paper aims to analyze the behavioral mechanism and economic consequences of how institutional investors cooperate to strengthen corporate governance effect theoretically and empirically.In theoretical research,we construct a sequential game model equilibrium to describe the cooperative behavior of mutual funds.Individual fund needs to select a limited number of adjacent funds to conduct governance cooperation under the constraint of behavioral energy ceiling,and maximize the corresponding governance benefits on her own portfolio.The equilibrium result of the cooperative game shows that the cooperation decisions among individual funds will form in the distribution characteristics as different net communities.The funds in the same network community will have high-quality cooperation relationship in governance,and can effectively promote corporate innovation.In empirical research,we define the information associations between paired funds in the same network community as cooperative relationships,and define the information associations between funds in different net communities as non-cooperative relationships.Using the innovation data of Chinese listed companies and the fund holding structure data from 2007 to 2021,this paper obtains the following empirical results.First,this paper finds that the intensity of cooperative relationships for shareholding funds is significantly positively correlated with the level of future corporate innovation activities,indicating that there is a governance cooperation effect among individual institutional investors and it has an important incentive effect on corporate innovation.Second,further research on the cooperation behavior among funds finds that there exist two types of specific cooperation channels,namely“Joint Site-visiting”and“Synchronous Trading”.“Joint Site-visiting”refers that two funds with community cooperation relationship have a higher probability of jointly participating in site-visiting on target listed company on the same day than funds without cooperation relationship.“Synchronous Trading”refers that two funds with community cooperation relationship that tend to trade securities in a similar direction and proportion.Third,further examination on cooperation effect of funds in the same network community structure shows that the governance incentive of cooperative funds is affected by the governance willingness of institutional investors.Funds with stronger cooperation willingness can urge both parties to participate in“Joint Site-visiting”more frequently,and strengthen the incentive effect on the innovation activities of listed firms.The conclusion of this paper has the following contributions.First,this paper deepens the understanding of institutional investor information network structure.This paper finds that the competition and cooperation of rational institutional investors for information resources is the internal economic reason for the formation of information network structure.In the net community structure of institutional investors proposed in this paper,the information competition behavior of institutional investors for governance cooperation chances is significantly different from the characteristics of information-sharing behavior.For example,the relationships on network community cooperation are exclusive,and need to be agreed by both parties,and cannot be transferred to third parties.Second,this paper extends the mechanism theory of institutional investors participation in corporate governance.Based on the reality that individual institutional investors in the Chinese capital market have weak speaking rights,this paper further studies the cooperation mechanism of institutional investors in corporate governance.We find that the cooperative governance behavior of institutional investors under the structure of network community can significantly strengthen the governance effect on the corporate,which can enhance the governance willingness of institutional investors and provide a new research perspective on corporate governance cooperation.The findings of this paper have several important implications for market regulators,institutional investors and listed companies.First,for market regulators,this paper shows that encouraging cooperative behavior of institutional investors can alleviate the imbalance state of governance right in the market and help stimulate the modernization of China's market governance ability.Meanwhile,comprehensively cultivating and developing institutional investors with different investment styles in the market can stimulate more cooperative governance on listed firms.Second,for institutional investors,this paper shows that asset management managers need to overcome the negative thinking of“free riding”,and shift from passive shareholding to active supervision,playing an effective role in corporate governance through cooperative behavior.Third,for listed corporate,they can provide more convenient cooperation environment and communication platform for institutional investors,which can help in reforming the existing governance environment and effectively supervising the behavior of controlling shareholders.