方言差异与企业地理边界扩张

Dialectal Difference and Corporate Geographical Boundary Expansion

本文使用2003-2015年工商注册企业新建分公司的数据,探讨同一地级市不同县之间的方言差异如何影响企业地理边界扩张。本文使用泊松伪最大似然估计的回归方法,结果发现,方言差异会阻碍企业地理边界扩张,经过一系列稳健性检验后,结论依然成立。机制分析表明,方言差异主要通过信任效应而非交流效应抑制企业地理边界扩张。更为重要的是,方言差异会更加抑制更依赖地区间相互信任的垂直型扩张、向高技能行业扩张以及向绩效异质程度更大行业的扩张,这进一步证实了信任机制的可靠性。本文还发现方言差异对小规模企业、非国有企业以及地理边界扩张经验欠缺的企业影响更大。本文基于单一国家内部的方言文化差异,从非正式制度的视角丰富了企业地理边界扩张的相关研究。

This paper uses business registration data on newly opened affiliates from between 2003 and 2015 to investigate the effects of dialectal difference between different counties in the same prefecture-level city on the geographical boundary expansion of firms.This paper uses the Poisson-Maximum likelihood regression method,the results indicate that dialectal difference significantly hinders corporate geographical boundary expansion and these results are valid after a series of robustness tests.Analysis of the mechanism reveals that dialectal difference primarily supresses the geographical boundary expansion of firms through the trust channel rather than the exchange channel.More importantly,the trust channel is more reliable,as the effects are more pronounced for expansions that are more sensitive to inter-regional trust,such as vertical geographical boundary expansion,expansion into higher skill-intensity industries and expansion into greater performance-heterogeneity industries.This work finds that the effects are more significant in smaller firms,those that are non-state owned and with less cross-regional operation experience.Based on the dialectal difference within the same country,the paper enriches the literature on the geographical boundary of firms from the perspective of informal institutions.