Mixed Ownership Reform and Financial Asset Allocation of State-Owned Enterprises
YE Yongwei, LI Zengfu
School of Public Economics and Management, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics; School of Economics and Management, South China Normal University
Summary:
The Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China highlighted the necessity of actively developing a mixed ownership economy with the mutual integration of state-owned capital, collective capital, and non-public capital. It also recommended that private capital be allowed to participate in state-owned capital investment projects. The influence of mixed ownership reform on corporate behavior is gaining increasing academic attention. The central question addressed in this paper is whether mixed ownership reform affects state-owned enterprises' financial asset investments. As state-owned enterprises undergo mixed ownership reform, the entry of non-state-owned shareholders may theoretically affect corporate governance structure and resource endowments. This in turn will affect agency conflict and the financing constraints of state-owned enterprises. First, non-state-owned shareholders have a strong motivation to supervise managers as their capital enters state-owned enterprises due to the profit-seeking nature of non-state-owned capital. This motivation helps to alleviate the lack of supervision in state-owned enterprises. When making decisions in this context, a manager will pay more attention to the long-term development of the enterprise rather than short-term benefits. The manager will make more fixed asset investments, such as investments in innovation. However, fixed asset investments have long cycle characteristics. They are therefore subject to more uncertainty and higher adjustment costs. Fixed asset investments will inevitably cause huge losses if they are interrupted. Corporate managers are thus motivated to use financial assets' reservoir effects to reduce the impact of future uncertainty and adjustment costs on their fixed asset investments. Second, the proportion of state-owned equity has continued to decline with the entry of non-state-owned capital. The policy burden on state-owned enterprises will also be reduced significantly. This change may weaken the resource effect associated with state-owned equity, which will increase the financing constraints faced by enterprises. Based on the precautionary savings motivation, corporate managers will therefore allocate more financial assets to smooth their enterprises' fixed asset investments. Their goal is to avoid financing constraints that would cause fixed asset investment projects to fall into financial difficulties. Based on the above analysis, this paper uses panel data on China's listed companies from 2010 to 2017 to examine the impact of mixed ownership reform on state-owned enterprises' financial asset allocation behavior. The paper focuses on the motivations behind state-owned enterprises' financial asset investments during the process of mixed ownership reform. The results show that the entry of non-state-owned shareholders promotes state-owned enterprises' financial asset investments. By testing potential mechanisms, we show that both the governance effect and the strengthening effect of financing constraints caused by the entry of non-state-owned shareholders strengthen state-owned enterprises' precautionary savings motivation. State-owned enterprises will therefore increase their investments in financial assets. The above results suggest that it is not the interest-seeking motivation but the precautionary savings motivation that drives state-owned enterprises' financial asset investments in response to the entry of non-state-owned shareholders. The paper's main contributions are as follows. First, many studies address the economic consequences of mixed ownership reform, but none examine these consequences from the perspective of financial asset allocation. This paper therefore enriches the literature in this area. Second, the literature mostly addresses the economic consequences of corporate financial asset investment, paying less attention to its driving factors. This paper studies the driving factors of enterprises' financial asset investments after the entry of non-state-owned shareholders, thus providing an effective supplement to the literature. Third, this paper's conclusions suggest that state-owned enterprises' financial asset investments in response to the entry of non-state-owned shareholders are driven not by the interest-seeking motivation but by the precautionary savings motivation. When attempting to unravel the complexities of corporate financial asset investments, we should therefore identify the different motives for corporate financial asset investment and treat these motives differently.
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