| With the development of economic globalization,the competitive environment of market that firms faced has fundamentally changed.Based on the requirement of improving the firm competitiveness and adaptability,firms began to rely more on the mutual cooperation with other firms,government,banks,suppliers and consumers.Now,the network development has been an important way of firm growth.In this context,as an important interfirm relation of ownerships,cross-shareholdings has been extensively developed with the process that the government pushed the shareholding systems of firms to promote the enterprise integration and improve their market competitiveness.However,due to the late development of cross-shareholdings,the study of cross-shareholdings is still in its infancy in our country,and its research perspectives and approaches are also deficient.Then,it has led to the stituation that the existing research results can not provide the effectively theoretical and empirical supports for the development of cross-shareholdings in China.Meanwhile,the related research abroad lack the examination of the effects of cross-shareholdings from the perspective of social network,despite the motivations and effects of cross-shareholdings have been widely discussed.This may be the reason of the controversial conclusions.So,based on the real development backgrounds of cross-shareholdings in our country,this paper further explores the impacts of cross-shareholdings on the behaviors of firm investment and financing and firm performance from the perspective of network structure,by using the analysis method of social network and econometrics and combining with the theory of corporate finance,social network and real option.Firstly,based on the reviewing and summarizing of relevant literature,this paper constructes the analytical framework about the relationships between cross-shareholding networks and firms' investment efficiency,and that is to examine the impact of firms' network positions in the cross-shareholding networks on their investment efficiency.The empirical results suggest that,higher network centrality or more structural holes can improve firms' investment efficiency.Specifically,on the one hand,more advantageous network position can better play a role in resources acquisition to mitigate the investment insufficiency.On the other hand,due to the reputation and punishment mechanism of networks,better network position can also restrain the overinvestment effectively.Further,we find that private firms can strengthen the positive relationship between network position and investment efficiency,on account of the difference of government intervention degree.Meanwhile,the results also indicate that the role of young firms' network position in improving the investment efficiency is more significant than mature firms.Secondly,this paper investigates the mechanism of impact of the inter-firm cross-shareholding network on debt financing cost from the perspective of information transfer of social network.Based a sample of A-share listed firms involving cross-shareholdings in Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Market form the year 2004 to 2014,we empirically examine the relationship between the firm's network positions in the cross-shareholding networks and debt financing cost by using the methods of social network and multiple regressions.The results suggest that the more superior firms' network positions are,the lower their costs of debt financing will be.Compared with the state-owned firms,we find that the cross-shareholding networks can more significantly reduce the debt financing cost of private firms with more serious problems of information asymmetry.Meanwhile,for the firms confronted with financing constraints,the cross-shareholding networks have a greater role in reducing the firms' debt financing cost.In addition,we also find that the impact of cross-shareholding networks on the cost of debt financing is more significant for young firms.Overall,our results indicate that the cross-shareholding networks have the important roles in relieving the degree of information asymmetry and reducing the debt financing cost of firms.Thirdly,this paper further constructs the research model of the relationships between cross-shareholding networks and firm operating performance on the basis of the above research.The results suggest that the network positions have a significantly positive influence on firm operating performance.Meanwhile,compared with state-owned firms,the cross-shareholding networks have more significantly positive roles in improving firm operating performance for the non-state-owned firms,especially for the private firms.Further,we find that the positive influence of cross-shareholding networks on firm operating performance is more significant for young firms.Finanlly,we also find that debt financing cost plays a mediating effect on the relationship between cross-shareholding networks and firm operating performance.Eventually,based on the growth option characteristics of cross-shareholding networks,this paper empirically researches the effects of growth options in cross-shareholding network measured by network positions on the relationships between firm-level returns and firm-level volatility.We document that,network centrality and structural holes can significantly strength the positive relationship between firm-level returns and firm-level volatility.Contrast to state-owned firms,network position has a much stronger effect on improving the positive relationship between returns and volatility in the firm level for private firms.Moreover,growth options for young firms have more significant impacts on the positive volatility-return relation form the life cycle level.The conclusions not only provide more evidence on the roles of cross-shareholding network in creating growth options,but also affirm the effects of growth options on asset pricing.Overall,the above research is an effective exploration for the cross-shareholdings study.It expands the research perspectives of cross-shareholdings,and makes us deepen the understandings of the relationships between cross-shareholdings,investment and financing,and firm performance. |
PDF Full Text Request