| Since 2009,mandatory corporate social responsibility(CSR)disclosure regulation establishes in China.Compared with previous one,this regulation includes guidance on disclosure details.Historical researches suggest that CSR disclosure has "double-edged sword"influence,both on improvement of information efficiency and decline of firm value.However,a research gap is still between influence of mandatory CSR disclosure and corporate investment.Based on the theory of information asymmetric and the theory of stakeholders,this paper aims to evaluate the effect of the mandatory policy on corporate investment efficiency.Firstly,based on a quasi-natural experiment design,we calculate investment efficiency by the Biddle method.We find that,compared to the non-disclosure firms,mandated reporting firms improve investment efficiency obviously.Moreover,we use the DD model to calculate the financial reporting quality(FRQ)and the Market Developing Index(MDI)designed by Fan to make further tests.Evidences support that investment efficiency improves more under low FRQ and MDI.To investigate the mechanism from CSR disclosure to corporate investment,we make analysis on the listed firms during the post-mandatory period,though the method of investment-opportunity sensitive model.Results are shown as following:higher investment-opportunity sensitive exists in the firms with high internal corporate govern quality which is measured by related transaction level and location of independent directors,and firms with high corporate govern environmental quality that is measured by law development index;higher investment efficiency exists in the low pollution industry or firms with lower political connection.Secondly,we devide firms into difference investment scenario based on the Biddle method,and find that the promotion effect of CSR disclosure only strongly exist in the overinvestment scenario,not in the underinvestment scenario.We speculate that this phenomenon may be caused by the additional CSR pressure from CSR disclosure.Furthermore,we make additional tests on corporate financial constraint which is observed by both investment-cash flow model cash-cash flow model.We find that CSR disclosure cannot reduce financial constraint both in full samples scenario or the high financial constraint scenario.In conclusion,evidences in this study prove that the CSR disclosure can provide effective complementary information which is helpful on the reduction of information asymmetric since the execution of mandatory policy,especially when the FRQ is low and information asymmetric is high.However,this policy also results in the promotion of the right of non-equity stakeholders,makes firms face higher CSR pressure and forces them devote more resources into CSR activities.Specially,this double-edged sword effect make firms in high pollution industry and with high political connection suffer more from inefficiency investment,financial restraint,especially in the underinvestment scenario.This study provides multiple positive evidences about the effect of CSR disclosure on corporate investment efficiency,and sheds light on the further development of China CSR reporting regulation. |
