Political Incentive,Accounting Conservatism And Investment Efficiency

State-owned enterprises have both the characteristics of enterprise and publicity.Such duality endows state-owned enterprise executives with the identity of "official and business".Executives of state-owned enterprises are not only professional managers in the traditional sense,but also have more chances to be transferred to government departments.Therefore,the executives of state-owned enterprises not only need to achieve the economic goals of enterprises,but also need to complete the policy tasks issued by the superior government.Driven by the dual objectives,state-owned enterprises have established diversified incentive mechanisms,which mainly include explicit incentives such as salary incentives,equity incentives,and implicit incentives such as promotion of senior executives and on-the-job consumption.Two different incentive modes have different motivations for SOE executives.Relevant literature shows that,compared with economic motivation,SOE executives with the status of "quasi-official" are more motivated by political motivation,and their behavior is more vulnerable to the influence of political motivation.Since the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China,a large number of government officials and senior executives of state-owned enterprises have fallen behind because of corruption.The number of officials involved in corruption and the amount of corruption are shocking.As a result of the unprecedented anti-corruption storm,the political environment faced by state-owned enterprise executives has also undergone tremendous changes,forming a natural research background for state-owned enterprise executives.Under the pressure of anti-corruption,out of avoiding political risks,the political motivation of state-owned enterprise executives also appears different bias.Investment,as the core of the three major financial activities,is crucial to the development and operation of micro-enterprises and macro-economy.State-owned enterprise investment is the main force to maintain China's economic growth.How the political motivation of executives in state-owned enterprises affects the investment decision-making depends on the relative strength of their motivation to pursue political promotion and avoid political risks.In order to clarify the influence mechanism of different political motivation bias on investment efficiency of state-owned enterprise executives and the moderating effect of accounting conservatism as an internal governance mechanism,this paper takes the eighteenth anti-corruption storm as an external shock event,extradites macro-policy to micro-enterprise level,and selects the data of A-share listed companies of state-owned enterprises from 2007 to2016 as the research object,aiming at state-owned enterprise executives.The relationship between political motivation,accounting conservatism and investment efficiency is empirically analyzed and tested.Firstly,this paper analyses how the implementation of the anti-corruption policy of the18 th National Congress affects the macro-political environment,and how the different political motivation bias of the executives of state-owned enterprises influences the investment efficiency.The results show that before the anti-corruption storm,the executives of state-owned enterprises are more likely to pursue official career promotion,and they are eager to improve their performance level by increasing investment,with a view to taking it as a jump in political promotion.After the anti-corruption storm,as a special group,the corruption of state-owned enterprise executives has attracted more and more attention,and a large number of officials have taken down their horses to deter the incumbent executives,seriously affecting the behavior of executives and enterprises,and the motive of "inaction" has brought more under-investment.Subsequently,this paper examines the moderating effect of accounting conservatism as an internal governance mechanism on this impact.Further research finds that accounting conservatism mitigates the impact of Executives' inaction motivation on under-investment,but has no significant moderating effect on Executives' eagerness to achieve and over-investment.On the basis of further dividing the level of accounting conservatism,it is found that moderate level of accounting conservatism can improve the quality of accounting information and investment efficiency of a company better than excessive level of accounting conservatism.The above empirical results test the influence of different political motivation bias on investment efficiency and the governance role of accounting conservatism.In view of the over-investment and under-investment caused by the political motivation of "eager to achieve" and "inaction" of state-owned enterprise executives under the background of anti-corruption,this paper also gives corresponding policy recommendations.The innovation of this paper lies in that the political motivation of state-owned enterprise executives is included in the research scope of national macro-political environment,and the political motivation of state-owned enterprise executives is subdivided into several parts.At the same time,the regulatory role of accounting conservatism in specific situations is explored.This study enriches the relevant literature on the influencing factors of the political motivation of state-owned enterprise executives,so as to promote the long-term development of state-owned enterprises after the anti-corruption Improving the effectiveness of the capital market provides a theoretical reference.