Social Capital, Political Connections And PE’s Investment And Financing Behaviors In Our Country

Since the21st century, China’s private equity funds (PE) has experienced great development. The annual compound growth rate of scale was up to40.77%from2003to2012. With the rapid development of PE, The agency problem caused by lack of trust caused has gradually drew people’s attention. The regional social capital is mainly embodied in the ability of people’s cooperate skills and mutual trust. This article links the regional social capital to PE’s agency problem and discusses the important role of social capital in relieving PE’s agency problem.This paper simultaneously uses the provincial philanthropy index and trust index as a proxy of social capital for the first time ever and empirically studies the influence of different levels of social capital of Chinese province on the private equity fund’s financing scale, investment scale and cross-regional investment from a micro perspective. Furthermore, we conduct and in-depth analysis of the substitute role of social capital and PE’s political connections in PE financing and investment behaviors. We find that: PEs raised in provinces with higher levels of social capital usually have larger financing scale. PEs are inclined to enlarge their investment scale in provinces with higher level of social capital. What’s more, when PEs are raised or PEs’ management company are in these provinces, they are more inclined to invest cross-regionally. We also find that the roles of social capital and political connections are substitute in PE’s financing and investment behaviors; in other words, when no political connections are available, social capital tends to have a stronger influence on PE’s financing and investment behaviors, and vice versa. Our study has not only opened up a new field of the research of social capital in the context of economic and financial science, but also been an enrichment and supplement the contents of PE studies.