A Study On Operation Performance Of State-Owned Listed Companies Based On The Principal-Agency Theory

China's state-owned enterprises is an important pillar for the national economy, which provided the material source for social public goods and quasi-public goods, meanwhile the state-owned enterprises assume partly functions of the government, as well as provide the social security mechanism for nationalities. At current, there is a principal-agency relationships between the government as the substitute of owners and enterprises in the state-owned enterprises, the various problem existed in the principal-agent relationships has been the focus and difficulties of the stated-owned enterprises reforming. From 30 years of China's state-owned enterprises reforming, we have experienced generally several stages, included delegating powers and benefits, twice change taxation patterns from profits to tax, contract and tenancy, and change the operational mechanisms of stated-owned enterprises. the third session meeting of the CPC 14th National Congress made it clear that the current and the future direction of the state-owned enterprises reform is to establish a basement of separate ownership and the operation right, and the principle-agency as a means of a modern enterprise system. The performances of state-owned listed enterprises have an important impact to the healthy development of state-owned companies and even the entire national economic stability. As a starting point, Jensen and Meckling (1976) create a school of analysis the business performance with the principal-agency relationship, and proved that, there is close linkage between the incentive mechanism and business performance. According the previous research results, the paper conducted a deepen research on the operating performance of listed companies under the state-owned principle-agency relationship.Firstly, this paper reviewed the connotation of the principal-agency relationship and the research of the relationship between the enterprises'operating performance and the Principal-Agency mechanism. Secondly, this paper analysis the reasons of the western commissioned-agent problem and explored and discussed the basic principal-agency relationship model. Thirdly, this paper analyzed the history and existing problems of china's state-owned listed companies'commissioned-agents, and the management experiences of the government holding companies in western countries. Fourthly, this paper studied the state-owned listed company's performance based on the principal-agency theory, and established Positive model between the principal-agency relationships and business performance. Fifthly, based on the theoretical model, this paper chooses the state-owned listed companies from 2001 to 2006 from the Sinofin database of the China Center for Economic Research, Peking University, and used statistical software Stata9.0 make econometric analysis to the panel data with stepwise regression.Eventually, through positive research, this paper concluded a series of conclusion. We found that there is a positive correlation between China's state-owned listed company's size and ROE. from researching shareholding structure; we found that there is a positive correlation between China's state-owned listed company's largest shareholder and the companies'achievement. What make this view established are the first major shareholder is a group and the ultimate controler is local government. Through researching on the incentive mechanism, we found that there are a weak positive correlation between the executives pay, executive's shareholding ratio and the companies'performance. Through researching the restraint mechanisms, we found there are the negative correlations between the concurrent dual of the chairman and manager and the return rates of the company. We also found that there is significant positive correlation between the audit committee and the business performances when the first major shareholder is not a group or the ultimate controler is central government. Finally, this paper studied the relationship between the sex ratio of the senior management in state-owned listed companies and corporate performance, the test results indicate that, the executives gender have not significant impact on the business performance results.By this study, we combine the principle-agency problems which exist in the state-owned listed companies, and according to the actual situations of China's state-owned listed companies, this paper put forward to several suggestions to implement an effective incentive-restraint mechanism, to improve agency efficiency, reduce agency costs.