| Corporate investment activities directly affect the future cash flow of an enterprise,and are an important path for business expansion in the course of business operation,as well as an important way for corporate growth and value appreciation.The achievement of investment objectives depends on the level of investment efficiency,which is an important guarantee for the survival and development of enterprises.Therefore,focusing on investment efficiency,optimizing investment decisions and improving investment benefits have always been the focus of enterprises.General Secretary Xi Jinping proposed at the annual meeting of Boao Forum for Asia in 2018 that China will continue to expand openness and further promote the development of global economic integration.In the context of continuous expansion and opening up,enterprises will face more development opportunities while their business and investment activities will inevitably be affected by the uncertainty brought about by environmental changes.For enterprises,environmental uncertainty prevents decision makers from accurately using external information to make effective investment decisions;at the same time,environmental uncertainty can also increase information asymmetry and aggravate agency problems,resulting in inefficient investment.Although environmental uncertainty has been found to be one of the main factors affecting the efficiency of corporate investment,the direction and extent of its influence have not been uniformly determined,which provides room for this paper to conduct relevant research.Since the concept of "mixed-ownership" was first introduced in the report of the 15 th CPC National Congress in 1997,the economic structure of China's ownership system has experienced a change from single-ownership economy to multiple-ownership economy,and then from multiple-ownership economy to mixed-ownership economy.In September 2015,the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China(CPC)and the State Council issued the "Guiding Opinions on Deepening the Reform of State-owned Enterprises",which reiterated that "developing a mixed-ownership economy" is a key direction for deepening the reform of stateowned enterprises.It also further clarifies that mixed-ownership reform is the formation of a cross-shareholding and mutually integrated shareholding structure of state-owned capital,private capital,and other capital in the enterprise(Hao,Yang,and Gong,Liutang,2017).The mixed-ownership system not only allows non-state capital to participate in state-owned enterprises,but also allows state-owned capital to participate in private enterprises,and the two types of capital complement each other through their advantages,prompting enterprises to better make investment decisions that are consistent with the sustainable development of the enterprise,improve investment efficiency,and increase enterprise value.Scholars have conducted abundant research on the economic consequences of mixed-ownership reform,however,studies that focus on the economic consequences of mixed-ownership reform from the perspective of investment efficiency are also relatively few,and the findings are not consistent.In addition,there are relatively few studies on the necessity and economic consequences of mixed-ownership reform in private enterprises.Therefore,it has some academic value to examine the economic consequences of mixed-ownership reform from the perspective of enterprise investment efficiency.From the practice of business operation,the efficiency of enterprise investment is not only influenced by the changes of external environment,but also the quality of decision makers,familiarity with the whole value chain,ability to control macroeconomic policies and sufficiency of investment funds in the implementation stage of investment decision is undoubtedly the guarantee of investment efficiency.Can the cross-shareholding and mutual integration brought about by the mixed-ownership reform bring into play the advantages of private entrepreneurs' management ability and market insight so as to reduce the impact of environmental uncertainty and alleviate non-efficient investment behavior? Can state-owned capital take advantage of its control over macroeconomic policies and deliver favorable information through its state-owned background to help private enterprises obtain more resources,thus alleviating the increase in financing constraints due to environmental uncertainties and subsequently improving investment efficiency? These are the questions that need to be urgently answered in the practice of enterprise hybrid reform.From the relevant studies on mixed-ownership,the current research is more focused on exploring the economic effects of mixed-ownership reforms undertaken by enterprises,and few studies have considered the motivation and economic consequences of mixed-ownership reforms undertaken by enterprises under the influence of external environmental uncertainty.Therefore,putting environmental uncertainty and mixed-ownership reform into the research framework of enterprise investment efficiency at the same time is more in line with the current actual situation of enterprises making investment decisions,and the conclusions drawn from the study are more theoretically and practically significant.Based on the above analysis,this paper intends to answer the following questions through research.What is the impact of environmental uncertainty on the inefficient investment of firms?What is the mechanism through which this effect arises? Does this impact and its mechanism of action differ for firms of different nature? Does the entry of heterogeneous capital into the enterprise in the mixed-ownership reform have an impact on the enterprise's inefficient investment with its advantages? What is the mechanism of this effect? Is there a "governance effect" or a "resource effect" or both? How do mixed-ownership reforms affect firms' inefficient investment under environmental uncertainty? What factors can reinforce this effect?Answering the above questions will not only help us examine the property rights specialization effect of mixed-ownership reform from the perspective of enterprise investment efficiency,but also provide reference for enterprises to make mixed property rights arrangement,improve investment efficiency,improve internal governance and enhance corporate performance in practice.The main contents of this paper are as follows.The first part is the introduction.It describes the research background,research purpose and significance of the paper;defines the three concepts of environmental uncertainty,mixedownership reform and corporate inefficient investment;clarifies the research ideas,research methods and innovation points.The second part is the literature review and theoretical foundation.The literature review focuses on mixed-ownership reform,environmental uncertainty,corporate inefficient investment and the relationship between the three.The theoretical foundation consists of two parts,one is a review of principal-agent,real options and property rights theories,and the other is an analysis of the mechanisms of interaction among environmental uncertainty,mixedownership reform and corporate inefficient investment.The foundation for the in-depth theoretical analysis and research hypotheses is laid in the following.The third part is the impact of environmental uncertainty on firms' inefficient investment.First,the impact of environmental uncertainty on corporate inefficient investment is analyzed from the perspective of real options theory and agency theory;after that,the mechanism of environmental uncertainty affecting corporate overinvestment and underinvestment is analyzed from the perspective of increasing agency costs and increasing financing constraints.Finally,a model is constructed with a sample of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2010-2019 to determine whether mixed-ownership reform has been carried out by whether the top ten shareholders of the company contain heterogeneous shareholders,to measure environmental uncertainty by the standard deviation of the fluctuation of non-normal operating income of the companies adjusted by industry,and to measure inefficient investment by the residuals of the Richardson S.(2006)investment estimation model,to investigate the above The impact of the theoretical analysis and the mechanism of action are tested.The fourth part is the impact of mixed-ownership reform on firms' inefficient investment.First,the reasons for over-investment and under-investment are explained from the perspective of agency costs and financing constraints;after that,the advantages of state-owned and private property rights in terms of corporate governance and resource acquisition are analyzed;further,the inhibitory effect of mixed-ownership reform on inefficient investment in state-owned and private enterprises is analyzed,and two mechanisms of this inhibitory effect are described-the "governance effect" and the-The "governance effect" and the "resource effect" are explained.Finally,the theoretical analysis is tested by constructing an econometric model with a sample of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2019,measuring corporate agency costs by asset turnover ratio and proxy financing constraints by SA index.The fifth part is the impact of mixed-ownership reform on the inefficient investment of firms under environmental uncertainty.Firstly,the mitigating effects of state-owned and private capital that can alleviate the inefficient investment of enterprises under the expectations of real options theory and agency theory are analyzed from the perspective of property rights specialization;further,the moderating effects of regional institutional environment differences and enterprise heterogeneity on the above effects are analyzed;finally,an econometric model is constructed with a sample of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2010-2019,following the definition of variables in the previous section and The regional marketization process index calculated by Wang Xiaolu(2017)measures the regional institutional environment to test the mechanism and influencing factors of the above theoretical analysis.The sixth part is the conclusion and insight.This part summarizes and concludes the results of the theoretical analysis and empirical research in the full text,then puts forward policy recommendations for reference and reference around the above research findings,and finally proposes directions that the authors can continue to study in depth in this research area.Based on the theoretical analysis and empirical research of the paper,the main conclusions obtained in this paper are.First,environmental uncertainty can intensify the degree of inefficient investment of enterprises.Compared with private enterprises,environmental uncertainty has a greater impact on the inefficient investment behavior of state-owned enterprises.Second,the higher the agency costs of firms,the greater the role of environmental uncertainty in exacerbating firms' overinvestment,confirming the mechanism by which environmental uncertainty acts on firms' inefficient investment by exacerbating agency costs.In addition,the higher the financing constraint faced by firms,the greater the exacerbating effect of environmental uncertainty on firms' underinvestment,confirming the financing constraint mechanism by which environmental uncertainty affects firms' inefficient investment.Third,mixed-ownership can significantly reduce the level of corporate inefficient investment in both SOEs and private enterprises.Fourth,the mixed-ownership reform of SOEs can alleviate the inefficient investment of enterprises by reducing agency costs and bring into play the "governance effect" of private capital;the mixed-ownership reform of private enterprises can suppress the inefficient investment of enterprises by reducing the financing constraints of enterprises and bring into play the "resource effect" of state-owned capital."The mixed-ownership reform of private enterprises suppresses inefficient investment by reducing the financing constraints of enterprises and brings into play the resource effect of state-owned capital.Fifth,mixed-ownership reform can alleviate the degree of inefficient investment caused by environmental uncertainty.In particular,the better the regional institutional environment,the greater the mitigation effect of mixed-ownership on inefficient investment caused by environmental uncertainty;the higher the agency cost of enterprises,the greater the mitigation effect of mixed-ownership on inefficient investment caused by environmental uncertainty,further confirming the "agency effect" of mixed-ownership analyzed above.The higher the financing constraint faced by private enterprises,the greater the mitigation effect of mixedownership on inefficient investment caused by environmental uncertainty,which further confirms the "resource effect" of mixed-ownership analyzed above.The research in this paper has certain theoretical and practical implications,which are mainly reflected in the following.First,there is no consensus in the literature on the direction and extent to which environmental uncertainty affects corporate inefficient investment.This paper investigates the impact of environmental uncertainty on inefficient investment at the micro level and illustrates the mechanism of environmental uncertainty on underinvestment and overinvestment,which enriches the research results on environmental uncertainty.Second,unlike previous studies that focused on the mixed-ownership reform of stateowned enterprises,this paper also takes private enterprises as the object of study and investigates the impact of mixed-ownership reform on inefficient investment of enterprises of different nature and its mechanism,which enriches the related research on the motives and effects of mixed-ownership reform of private enterprises.Third,integrating environmental uncertainty,mixed-ownership reforms,and inefficient corporate investment into a research framework to examine whether the "governance effect" and "resource effect" of mixed-ownership reforms lead to different economic consequences of mixed-ownership reforms in the presence of environmental uncertainty.Fourth,through empirical studies,we provide empirical evidence to inform the practice of mixed-ownership arrangements,improve investment efficiency,improve internal governance,and enhance corporate performance. |
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