The Impact Of A Change In Evaluation Index On The Efficiency Of State-Owned Enterprises’ Investments

As an important pillar for the economic development and social livelihood of the whole country,it is particularly important for State-owned enterprises(SOEs)to adopt scientific and reasonable performance evaluation indicators.2009,the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission(SASAC)of the State Council promulgated the Interim Measures for Business Performance Evaluation of Heads of Central Enterprises,which stipulates that central SOEs will use the economic value added(EVA)indicator instead of the return on net assets indicator for annual performance evaluation starting from 2010,and the remaining provincial SASACs The remaining local SOEs under the control of provincial SASACs also implemented this indicator in subsequent years,with a view to improving the serious problem of inefficient investment by SOEs.In this paper,we consider the changes of appraisal indexes as a quasi-natural experiment,divide the stateowned enterprises that have implemented EVA indexes and those that have not implemented EVA indexes into experimental and control groups,use the relevant data of state-owned listed companies from 2004-2021,construct a multi-period double difference model to explore the impact of implementing EVA appraisal on the investment efficiency of state-owned enterprises,and analyze the impact of appraisal indexes on inefficient investment from the perspective of agency costs Finally,a heterogeneous study is conducted based on SOEs with different functional attributes,and the following conclusions are drawn:(1)the implementation of EVA appraisal can effectively suppress the level of inefficient investment in SOEs,and the suppressive effect on over-investment is stronger than under-investment;(2)the implementation of EVA appraisal can significantly reduce the agency cost of SOEs,thus improving investment efficiency;(3)EVA appraisal has a significant suppressive effect on different types of(3)there are significant differences in the suppression effects of EVA appraisal on different types of SOEs,which can improve the level of inefficient investment in commercial SOEs,while the effect on socially beneficial SOEs is not significant.Based on the findings of this paper,the following policy recommendations are proposed: first,EVA assessment indicators can effectively suppress the level of inefficient investment in SOEs,and the assessment of performance indicators should be extended to provinces that have not implemented EVA indicators as soon as possible;second,there is a partial mediating effect of agency costs on the suppression effect of inefficient investment,and measures such as compensation incentive systems and information disclosure mechanisms should be established to match;third,the effect of implementing EVA assessment varies among different types of SOEs,and corresponding policies should be formulated according to the differences in functional attributes.