民营企业非正式制度资源、股权制衡与风险投资

Private Firms'Informal Institutional Resources,Equity Balance and Venture Capital

企业是国家创新体系的核心主体,科技金融是创新的血液,深入研究非正式制度资源对企业获得风险投资的影响及其作用机制,对打造“科技—金融—产业”良性循环、加快高质量发展具有重要价值。以创业板2014—2019年期间上市的389家民营企业为样本,实证探究非正式制度资源对民营企业风险资本融资的影响以及企业股权制衡度的中介作用。结果发现:由于民营企业非正式制度资源潜在的“资源诅咒”效应对企业长期发展的潜在影响,以高风险高收益为核心商业模式的风险投资者更倾向于投资不具有非正式制度资源的企业。进一步探究非正式制度资源的作用机理,发现拥有非正式制度资源的企业偏好低股权制衡度的资本结构,而这一“集权”动机与风险投资机构的“寻权”动机相冲突,进而影响风险投资介入意愿。稳健性检验支持了上述发现。

Firms are the core subject of the national innovation system.Technology finance is the blood of innovation.In-depth research on the impact of informal institutions on firms'venture capital(VC)investment and its mechanism bares both theoretical and practical value for further improving a pro-innovation financial system and accelerating high-level technological self-resilience and self-independence.As a typical economy in transition,China is undergoing rapid transformation and construction of market systems and regulations.The institutional environment and market-oriented transformation processes in different regions are various.Entrepreneurs and investors face multiple uncertainties,such as institution transformation and intensive market competition.Private enterprises have to rely on some alternative informal institutional resources to cope with the innovation constraints brought about by the lack of formal institutions.While for investors,the use of informal institutional resources raises the uncertainty of investment.Such negative expectations will further affect their investment decisions and preferences.Existing studies primarily focus on the influence of informal institutional resources on the consequences of investor involvement and lack consideration of their impact on the antecedents of the involvement.At the front line of China's market reform,this research explores how the informal institutional resources of private enterprises affect the investment decisions of VC and the mechanism of the influence.In this study,we draw from the resource curse theory and principle-agent theory,and employ a sample covering 389 private firms listed on the ChiNext from 2014 to 2019.Most data are collected from IPO prospectus,and this ascertains the event sequence between informal institution resources acquisition and VC investment.Then we empirically explore how do informal institutional resources of private enterprises impact private firms'financing and the mediating role of corporate equity balances.Empirical results show that due to the"resource curse"effect of informal institutional resources on firms'long-term development,VCs with high-risk and high-yield business models are more inclined to choose firms that have less informal institutional resources.Furthermore,this study finds that the equity balance of private firms partly mediates the relationship between the informal institution resource and the VC investment.That is,companies affiliated with informal institutional resources prefer a low equity balance degree ownership structure.This"centralization"motivation is conflicted with the"right-seeking"motivation of VC,reducing VC's investment willingness.Robustness tests further support the above conclusions.We introduce a series of substitution variables in the robustness check.The examination results support the above conclusions.In conclusion,this research reveals the impact of informal institutional resources on private firms'equity financing and recovers the blackbox of how informal institutional resource affects VC's investment willingness from a holistic perspective.This paper provides theoretical and practical inspirations for guiding the capital market to support innovation development.In the future,it is beneficial to incorporate comparative research on companies that have obtained VC but not publicly listed,and further explore the lasting impact of VC on corporate governance,innovation capability,and performance.Seconed,this paper uses the equity balance degree as a mediating variable to measure the"right-seeking"motivation of enterprises.Future research could find other variables to further depict the power conflict between enterprises and venture investors.