A Study On The Imitating Effect Of Investment Decision Of Listed Companies In China

Investment is one of the core issues of corporate finance.From the microeconomic point of view,enterprise investment is an important way for enterprises to realize reasonable resource allocation,is the foundation of orderly operation and healthy development of enterprises,and bears the important task of realizing the maximization of future value of enterprises;From the macroeconomic point of view,enterprise investment reflects the supply demand of the society and promotes the long-term growth of the national economy,which is an important part of the total amount of social investment.Therefore,the discussion on how to enhance the effectiveness of enterprise investment decision-making has important theoretical and practical significance at many levels,such as micro enterprise and macro market.Peer competitors are important stakeholders of the company.According to the results of Graham and Harvey(2001)interview survey,most enterprise managers will refer to or draw lessons from the financial decisions of their peers when making financial decisions,which also represents that peer competitors are playing an increasingly important role in enterprise decision-making.At present,scholars have discussed the relationship between peer competitors and enterprise investment decisions,and think that when external information is constantly integrated into their own investment decisions,the imitation effect will also come into being(Knyazeva et al.,2008;Fang Junxiong,2012).However,these studies have not been closely combined with the theory of inter-organization imitation,which has room for further discussion.according to the interorganizational imitation theory(Lieberman and Asaba,2006),the study of the imitation effect usually tries to answer three questions,the first is who to imitate(the object of imitation),the second is why to imitate(the imitation motivation),and the third is how to imitate(the imitation channel).This dissertation will also discuss carefully from these three aspects.Determining the object of investment decision imitation is the primary problem in this dissertation.The inter-organization imitation theory puts forward three kinds of imitation rules,the first is frequency imitation(imitating the behavior of most individuals),the second is characteristic imitation(imitating the behavior of individuals with similar characteristics),and the third is result imitation(imitating the behavior of individuals with better results).Available literatures have confirmed the existence of "herding behavior" in investment decisions of listed companies from the perspective of frequency imitation(Fang Junxiong,2012;Zhang Dunli and Jiang Xinfeng,2015),and pointed out that listed companies will imitate investment decisions(Chen and Ma,2017)of companies with similar characteristics from the perspective of characteristic imitation,but there are few literatures to study from the perspective of result imitation.Based on the view that investment is aimed at maximizing the value of the enterprise,the enterprises that produce better investment results are more attractive to other companies of their peers,and such imitation is more reasonable and technical value.High-quality investment can enhance the company's market position,market value level and investment efficiency,so companies can choose the imitation object of investment decision according to these factors.Why do enterprises have imitation effect in investment decision?Based on social learning theory,if there is no rich and high quality private information as support,it will become a high quality choice to promote investment decision by imitating the investment behavior of companies with better investment results in the same industry to obtain information to judge the future return.Based on the theory of market competition,fierce market competition will highlight the strategic value of investment,but also will exert great pressure on enterprises,through the imitation of investment decisions to enterprises with better investment results in the same industry can alleviate the competitive pressure.Based on reputation theory,reputation mechanism is a good hidden incentive,especially for managers with long development space in their future career,it is more necessary to maintain reputation by improving current performance,and the motivation to maximize enterprise value by imitating the investment decisions of companies with better investment results in the same industry.Therefore,based on social learning theory,market competition theory and reputation theory can explain the motivation of investment decision imitation effect.After defining the object and motivation of investment decision imitation,it is necessary to explore how enterprises can realize the effect of investment decision imitation.The existence of information channel is a necessary condition for the occurrence of imitation effect.First,as an important information intermediary in the capital market,analysts can provide market participants with comprehensive information about the macro environment and the micro behavior of the company with the expertise of their own field.Secondly,the director association is an efficient and reliable source of external information,and the management of the company can accurately obtain the investment information of the company with the connection imitation object through many ways,such as formal communication and private communication.Finally,geographical proximity will bring information advantages to companies,and geographical proximity will not only increase the opportunity of communication between business managers,but also promote the flow of human capital,which is conducive to the transmission of information and knowledge spillover.These factors may become the information channel of investment decision imitation effect.This dissertation tries to discuss the following three problems according to the result imitation rule:First,how will the listed companies choose the imitation object of investment decision?Second,what are the motivation for the imitation effect of investment decision?The third is to analyze the investment decision imitation effect through which imitation channels to achieve?Based on the above analysis,this dissertation selects the listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2008 to 2018 as the research object,and calls the specific companiy that need to be inspected in the sample as focus companies.Firstly,we investigate whether the imitation intensity of investment decision is higher in the same industry,high market value high market value and high efficiency companies,so as to determine the imitation target of investment decisions in focus companies under different social learning motivation,market competition pressure and managers' reputation incentive.Using a combination of normative and empirical research,the following conclusions are drawn:(1)Because the higher market position,the higher market value and the higher investment efficiency are the intuitive performance of the enterprise investment to produce the better result,the focus company's imitation intensity of the investment decision of these three kinds of companies is higher,which indicates that the focus company will choose the investment decision imitation object based on the result imitation rule.And this kind of investment decision imitation effect can enhance the company's future profitability.(2)The imitation behavior of focus company to the investment decision of the same industry with high market position,high market value and high investment efficiency company is more obvious in the company with high social learning motivation,high market competition degree and high reputation incentive degree of managers,which indicates that social learning motivation,relieving competition pressure motivation and manager reputation incentive are the motivation of investment decision imitation effect.Moreover,social learning motivation is the motivation of intangible assets investment imitation effect and R&D investment imitation effect,market competition environment is the motivation of intangible assets investment,long-term equity investment and R&D investment imitation effect,and manager reputation incentive is mainly the motivation of fixed assets investment imitation effect.(3)If imitation objects have more analyst attention,the two sides between focus companies and imitation objects have the relationship of director connection or have near geographical distance,the investment decision imitation effect of the focus company will also be enhanced.It shows that the analyst of the imitative object,the relationship between the directors and the geographical proximity can be used as the information channel of the imitative effect of the investment decision.This dissertation tries to realize the following three aspects of innovation:(1)To broaden the research perspective of investment decision imitation effect.For the first time,this dissertation tries to test the specific object of investment decision imitation by the result imitation rule.At present,the research on the imitation among organizations of investment decision-making is mainly discussed under the frequency imitation rule,and few literatures take the result imitation rule as the starting point.In this paper,peer enterprises are divided into three groups according to market position,market value and investment efficiency.By comparing the correlation between focus companies and different reference groups,the dissertation examines whether focus companies will be more sensitive to investment decisions of high position,high market value and high efficiency companies in the same industry.Compared with the investment herd behavior produced by blind imitation,the investment decision imitation effect under the result imitation rule is not only more in line with the logic imitation law,but also more helpful to help the company to realize the future value promotion,has the higher practical technical significance.(2)It enriches the research on the motivation of investment decision-making imitation effect.Starting with combing and analyzing the theory of inter-organizational imitation,this dissertation explores more systematically the motivation of the imitation effect of investment decision.It concludes that social learning motivation,relieving market competition pressure and maintaining manager's reputation are the fundamental drivers of investment decision imitation effect,and adopts empirical method and various robust methods to verify it,and further examines the different types of investment decision imitation effect drivers which are subdivided.Because the research in this dissertation is based on the result imitation rule,it is helpful to compare the motivation of the imitation effect with the motivation of herding behavior in the past,to understand the internal mechanism of the investment decision imitation under the two rules and the similarities and differences of the applicable environment.(3)Expanding the depth and breadth of research on imitation among investment decision-making organizations.This dissertation makes a multi-dimensional study of the previous research on the imitation effect of investment decision.According to the whole research idea of "imitating object-imitation motivation-imitation channel ",this dissertation makes a systematic study step by step,and breaks through the singleness of the previous related imitation research.After solving the lack of the specific imitation object in the existing literature and examining its motivation,this dissertation further analyzes the channels through which the investment decision imitation is realized,and links it logically with each other.Through the study of the multi-dimensional problem of the research topic of investment decision imitation effect,it is helpful to observe the whole picture of the imitation between investment decision organizations,fully explore the real connotation of the imitation effect of investment decision,and broaden the research depth and breadth of the literature on the imitation effect of financial decision.