Summary:
Since the reform and opening-up policy, China's economy has made remarkable achievements with innovation playing an important role. As China enters a phase of high-quality development, innovation is becoming increasingly important. However, innovation is characterized by a high failure rate and high risk, causing enterprise decision makers' risk tolerance to be the basic determinant of corporate innovation. The ownership structure of listed companies in China is highly concentrated, and the ultimate controller determines the company's major decisions. Although ultimate controllers' wealth concentration has an impact on enterprise innovation through risk tolerance, few studies focus on this issue. Taking Chinese private listed companies as an example, this paper examines whether ultimate controllers' wealth concentration affects corporate innovation. In theory, high wealth concentration of ultimate controllers may have both positive and negative effects. The risk diversification hypothesis suggests that higher wealth concentration will increase the actual controllers' risk exposure level, reduce their risk preference, and lead to a lower tolerance for innovation failure, thus inhibiting corporate innovation. However, the information hypothesis suggests that higher wealth concentration makes the actual controller more capable and energetic to obtain and analyze the enterprise's internal and external information, to make better innovation decisions and activities, and to ultimately contribute to corporate innovation. Based on manually collected data on actual controllers' wealth concentration, this paper empirically studies the influence of the wealth concentration of actual controllers in private listed companies on corporate innovation. The results show that the higher the ultimate controllers' wealth concentration, the lower the level of innovation. The mechanism test shows that ultimate controllers' wealth concentration reduces enterprises' risk-taking. These results support the risk diversification hypothesis, which states that the higher the ultimate controllers' wealth concentration, the lower their tolerance for innovation failure will be, hindering corporate innovation. Further research shows that government subsidies can act as a risk buffer and reduce the negative effect of ultimate controllers' wealth concentration on innovation by dispersing innovation risks. Institutional investors can play a monitoring and balancing role to reduce the negative impact of ultimate controllers' wealth concentration on innovation by restraining risk aversion. Finally, when ultimate controllers' wealth concentration is higher, the controllers are more likely to engage in technology takeovers to compensate for insufficient independent innovation. Our paper makes several contributions to the literature. First, taking Chinese private listed companies with highly concentrated equity as an example, this paper studies the influence of actual controllers' wealth concentration on innovation and thus contributes to the literature on corporate innovation. Second, this paper supplements studies on the relationship between government subsidies and corporate innovation from the perspective of government subsidies acting as a risk buffer. Third, from the perspective of limiting ultimate controllers' risk aversion, this paper expands the literature on institutional investors' governance role. Fourth, from the substitution effect of technology mergers and acquisitions (M&A) on independent innovation, this paper expands research on technology M&A. To stimulate private enterprises' innovation, this paper has the following policy implications. First, the individual income tax rate for the restricted transfer of shares in listed companies should be lowered to reduce the cost of actual controllers' wealth dispersion, encourage wealth dispersion, and thus stimulate the innovation of private enterprises. Second, the differentiated arrangement of voting rights should be expanded and strengthened to reduce the risk of loss of control rights caused by diversifying actual controllers' ownership rights, encourage actual controllers to diversify their wealth investment, and stimulate private enterprises' innovation. Third, the government should play a risk-sharing role in corporate innovation to improve ultimate controllers' innovation failure tolerance and stimulate private enterprises' innovation. Finally, we should develop institutional investors and increase their voting power surrounding corporate innovation so that they can better play a monitoring and balancing role against the self-interest of actual controllers with concentrated wealth, which will further stimulate private enterprises' innovation.
潘红波, 杨朝雅, 李丹玉. 如何激发民营企业创新——来自实际控制人财富集中度的视角[J]. 金融研究, 2022, 502(4): 114-132.
PAN Hongbo, YANG Zhaoya, LI Danyu. How to Stimulate Private Enterprises' Innovation: Evidence from Ultimate Controllers' Wealth Concentration. Journal of Financial Research, 2022, 502(4): 114-132.
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