School of Accounting, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Wuhan, China.
School of Accounting, Anhui University of Finance and Economics, Bengbu, China.
PLoS One. 2023 May 19;18(5):e0285342. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0285342. eCollection 2023.
The negative impact of the financialization of non-financial firms cannot be ignored in China. However, existing studies neglect that the government environmental governance is an important influential factor in corporate investment decisions. Using a sample of China's non-financial listed firms from 2007 to 2020, we examine the impact of local governments' energy-saving target constraints on the financialization of local firms in terms of whether local governments set numerically specific energy-saving targets in the Government Work Reports. The main findings of this paper are as follows. First, local governments setting clear energy-saving targets inhibit local firms' financialization and the result holds even after a series of robustness tests. Second, the negative association between local governments' energy-saving target constraints and firm financialization is more pronounced among firms in eastern regions and green provinces. Third, the quality of firm information disclosure and local environmental public supervision enhance the inhibiting effect of local governments' energy-saving target constraints on firm financialization. Fourth, local governments' energy-saving target constraints restrain firm financialization by attracting more external analyst coverage and encouraging internal technological innovation. Moreover, this inhibiting effect can help reduce overinvestment and improve the total factor productivity of firms. Our study provides evidence supporting firm financialization studies from the novel perspective of government environmental governance.
在中国，非金融企业金融化的负面影响不容忽视。然而，现有研究忽视了政府环境治理是企业投资决策的一个重要影响因素。本文利用 2007-2020 年中国非金融上市公司的样本，从政府工作报告中地方政府是否设定具体的节能目标数值的角度，考察了地方政府节能目标约束对地方企业金融化的影响。本文的主要发现如下。第一，地方政府设定明确的节能目标会抑制本地企业的金融化，这一结果在经过一系列稳健性检验后仍然成立。第二，在东部地区和绿色省份的企业中，地方政府节能目标约束与企业金融化之间的负相关关系更为显著。第三，企业信息披露质量和地方环境公众监督提高了地方政府节能目标约束对企业金融化的抑制作用。第四，地方政府的节能目标约束通过吸引更多的外部分析师覆盖和鼓励内部技术创新来抑制企业的金融化。此外，这种抑制效应有助于减少过度投资，提高企业的全要素生产率。本研究从政府环境治理的新视角为企业金融化研究提供了证据。
