从委托理财收益率看上市公司委托代理问题

本文将委托理财收益率作为研究对象,考察了上市公司的委托代理问题.通过研究发现,"可操控现金"与委托理财收益率显著负相关;若给定"可操控现金",大股东持股比例越高的公司其委托理财收益率越高.这一结果说明,"可操控现金"越多,上市公司的委托代理问题越严重;大股东的持股比例越高,其对管理层代理问题的约束力越强.研究还发现国外同类研究常用的"自由现金流"变量不能捕捉这一现象.

Research on the Agency Problem of Listed Companies: Evidence from Entrusted Investment

The agency problem in listed companies is one of the most interesting issues in financial literature. According to Jensen (1986), managers of listed companies can take opportunistic behaviors, using free cash flow. But obviously free cash flow is not the only source for the managerial opportunistic behaviors. In an economy with underdeveloped capital market and poor investor protection, the agency problem is not just more severe but also could be caused by 'free cash'. (The 'free cash' is the cash holdings of listed companies raised by financing behaviors typically in the economy with underdeveloped capital market and poor investor protection and the 'free cash' could be just lying in the bank account of listed companies for years.) Given the institutional background of Chinese stock market, this paper tests whether there is agency problem caused by free cash in Chinese listed companies and how the ownership structure would influence such agency problem. One of the difficulties of testing agency problem is how to find the evidence of inefficiency due to agency problem. The classical research design is to test the relation between agency problem proxy and the market value of listed companies. However, such research design is not suitable for underdeveloped capital market because the stock price may be too noisy to reflect the value of listed firms. This study investigates agency problems by observing the return of a special investment: entrusted investments. We find that the "manipulable cash" as a proxy for free cash is negatively related to the return of entrusted investment; and given the amount of manipulable cash, the number of shares from controlling stockholder is positively related to the return of entrusted investment. Our findings suggest that when managers have more manipulable cash on hand, they use the money less efficiently. Controlling shareholders have a monitoring effect on this behavior of managers.