Research On The Long-Term Investment Effect Of State-Owned Enterprise Mergers And Acquisitions

China has greatly promoted the reform of state-owned enterprises(SOEs)to stimulate the rapid growth of the state-owned economy since the reform and opening up.State-owned enterprises have become the nucleus in the socialist economy construction.However,the problems of weak competitiveness,insufficient innovation,and poor performance of SOEs still exist in varying degrees.Speeding up the optimization of state-owned economic layout,structural adjustment,and strategic mergers and acquisitions(M&As)are important ways for state-owned enterprises to optimize resource allocation and to achieve the goal of "becoming stronger?better and bigger enterprises".In recent years,SOEs in China have initiated a large number of M&A cases,and what effects the M&As of state-owned enterprise have achieved is now an important area of academic and policy research.Among them,whether the M&As of China's SOEs have made impacts on long-term investment and total factor productivity of merged enterprise is an important topic worth in-depth research.The long-term investment of an enterprise is an investment with an investment period of more than one year in physical capital and non-physical capital,and it is the main way and guarantee for an enterprise to obtain its long-term development capabilities.In traditional economic theory,the object of enterprise' long-term investment which only involves physical capital,technological innovation and human capital are not the content of long-term investment of enterprises.With the rise and maturity of human capital theory and endogenous economic growth theory,the decisive role of technological innovation and human capital on the long-term development of enterprises and economic growth has been fully understood.Technological innovation and human capital have become the key content of enterprises' independent capital forms of long-term investment,and its importance is increasing day by day.In the long-term capital investment of enterprises,physical capital investment is the material carrier for enterprise to expand productivity.Human capital investment is the necessary support for technological innovation,and technological innovation output can be regarded as the joint output of human capital investment and innovation investment.The increase in productivity is the actual result of the enterprises' human capital upgrade and technological innovation investment.M&As is the reorganization of various resources among enterprises.On the one hand,M&As of enterprises will inevitably involve the integration and reorganization of its physical capital,human capital,and technological innovation resources among enterprises.On the other hand,M&As will have impacts on enterprises in the direction and effects of the long-term investment.M&As of state-owned enterprise generally can expand enterprises' physical capital.However,after mergers and acquisitions,can M&As have effects on the human capital upgrade,technological innovation output increase,and even improvement of total factor productivity that the long-term investment involves,thereby promoting the goal of state-owned enterprise becoming “stronger and better”? This remains to be tested empirically.The empirical test of this thesis is based on M&As of A-share listed SOEs from2008 to 2019.It systematically investigates the impacts of the M&As of SOEs on the long-term investment of enterprises from three aspects respectively: human capital upgrade,technological innovation input and output,and total factor productivity changes.Compared with previous researches,the financial data,patent data and human capital data of the sample companies have been used to the utmost extent.By obtaining enterprise-level human capital,technological innovation,and productivity indicators through calculation,this thesis is based on the propensity score matching combined with the difference-in-difference methods(PSM+DID)to investigate the long-term investment effects of the M&As of state-owned enterprises.The main empirical results this thesis has achieved are as follows:(1)The M&As of SOEs have significantly promoted their human capital upgrading investment,and after the M&As,the total number and proportion of skilled labor and highly educated labor have increased significantly,and that of the low-skilled labor has decreased.The human capital upgrading effect of M&As is more significant in central SOEs and large-scale state-owned enterprises.The test results of the impact mechanism show that the M&As of state-owned enterprises mainly affect the market scale of the company and the physical capital-skills complementary effect,which has a positive impact on the upgrading of human capital.(2)On the relationship between the M&As and technology innovation of state-owned enterprises,the M&As could theoretically improve the level of technology innovation of SOEs,and empirical research has also verified this conclusion.The total number of patent applications and utility models has increased significantly after the M&As,but the impact of appearance design patents is not significant,indicating that the innovation quality of state-owned enterprises after mergers and acquisitions has been greatly improved.Further research found that the technological innovation effect of the M&As of state-owned enterprise varies due to the differences in state-owned enterprise regulatory reforms,the size of enterprises,and the industry research and development(R&D)intensity.Specifically,the increase in the quantity and promotion of innovation quality in the M&As of state-owned enterprises mainly appear after the regulatory reform,and in large-scale SOEs,or R&D-intensive state-owned enterprises,while the influence is limited before the regulatory reform in state-owned enterprises,or the type of small-scale enterprises and non-R&D-intensive state-owned enterprises.Finally,after using the R&D investment and the number of R&D personnel to replace technical innovation indicators,the technological innovation effect of the M&As of state-owned enterprises still exists,that is,the mergers and acquisitions of state-owned enterprise not only increase the R&D investment of enterprises,but also help increase innovation output.(3)State-owned enterprise mergers and acquisitions have significantly promoted total factor productivity,and these two aspects above have a significant positive causal effect.The productivity effects of state-owned enterprise M&As are dynamic and sustained.Through the expansion of market scale,technological innovation,and human capital upgrading effect,the M&As has had a positive impact on productivity improvement.The productivity effect of the state-owned enterprise merger has significant heterogeneity due to different enterprise scale and ownership.The above empirical results prove that the theoretical proposition of this thesis is valid,which claims that M&As of state-owned enterprises can improve the human capital upgrade?technological innovation and productivity of state-owned enterprises' long-term investment.The policy implications of the theoretical research results of this thesis are as follows: 1.From the perspective of government state-owned assets management,the formulation of state-owned enterprise M&As policies should focus more on the promotion of human capital upgrade,technological innovation output,and total factor productivity of SOEs as the policy objective,and appropriately weaken the attention and assessment on short-term financial performance and market value improvement of the acquired enterprises,and through market merger and acquisition activities in order to promote the goal of becoming "stronger ? better and bigger" state-owned enterprises.2.At the enterprise level,state-owned enterprises' decision makers should deeply understand that their core competitiveness and long-term development capabilities are mainly derived from continuous investment in upgrading and accumulation of human capital and technological innovation.When selecting M&As targets,they should consider whether the acquisition targets can bring more factors that are conducive to the improvement of long-term development capabilities.Correspondingly they should dilute the effect of M&As on the improvement of short-term financial output,and set up the principle of selecting targets for M&As with the promotion of the enterprises' s core competitiveness and long-run sustainable capabilities as the main driving force.