| Forty years since China’s reform and opening up,large-scale investment in various types of funds and resources has promoted sustained and high-speed economic growth.At the same time,under the influence of multiple factors such as administrative intervention and investment impulses,China’s economic development has also appeared many new problems,such as overcapacity,repeated investment,uneven distribution of industry investment.According to the data of China Statistical Yearbook,from January 2007 to December 2017,China’s manufacturing and real estate investment accounted for the largest proportion of the total fixed assets investment in the whole society,32.16% and 24.31% respectively,and the sum of the two has exceeded 50%,while the investment in agriculture,forestry,animal husbandry and fishery accounted for only 3.2%.It can be seen that the phenomenon that a large amount of investment is concentrated in a few industries is very significant.In recent years,many industries have exposed the problem of overcapacity,of which steel,coal,cement and electrolytic aluminium industries have suffered the most serious decline in profits,which to some extent reflects the economic consequences of "high investment,high convergence".Therefore,overcapacity caused by investment aggregation has become one of the persistent problems to be solved urgently under the new normal of China’s economy.The 2016 Central Economic Work Conference proposed that “de-capacity” is the top priority of the five economic tasks;In December 2017,the Central Economic Work Conference again emphasized that it was important to promote the resolution of excess capacity as the starting point of structural reform on the supply side.The overcapacity at the macro level stems from the accumulation at the corporate level.In other words,the excessive convergence of investment caused by blind investment in the corporate may be an important cause of overcapacity in the macro economy.When an industry over-invests in the long-term accumulation,it will lead to structural imbalances in the industry.In view of this,starting from the phenomenon of micro-corporate investment clustering,exploring new ideas for industrial structure transformation and adjustment is an urgent issue.Corporates are the basic components of the market and play an important role in the process of a country’s economic operation.The daily business activities of corporates are embedded in a specific social and economic environment,and its behavior is inevitably affected by social factors.Especially for high-risk investment decisions,reference and learning from industry-level information is a convenient way to reduce uncertainty,and the interactive influence of investment decisions of corporates in the same industry is the key factor to the convergence of corporate investment.The Peer Effect of corporate investment describes such a phenomenon: the corporate will imitate the relevant decision-making of other corporates within a certain comparable range in the process of decision-making.The peer effect essentially reflects the decision-makers’ behavior of relying too much on public information and neglecting private information.A corporate is a collection of many individuals,whose behavior reflects the individual characteristics or individual will of managers to a certain extent.As the key subject of business decision-making,managers may follow the self-interested motivation and ignore the unique value judgment of the corporate to follow and imitate the behavior of the peer of corporates,which will inevitably cause the investment decision to deviate from the optimal investment target.From the perspective of economic consequences,excessive investment convergence will reduce the efficiency of business operations,hinder the future development of corporates,and undermine the business objectives of maximizing shareholders’ interests.The peer effect of investment reflects the agency problem between managers and investors to a certain extent.For the whole society,the excessive concentration of limited resources will lead to ineffective allocation of market resources.Overheated investment in a certain industry will aggravate the speed of industry recession and also deepen the problem of overcapacity.It ultimately interferes with the normal operation of macro-economy.Therefore,it is helpful to open up the black box of corporate investment decision-making process to study the specific characteristics,inherent mechanism and possible economic consequences of the peer effect in the process of corporate investment decision-making.In the socialist market economy system where the market is the main mode of resource allocation,proper government intervention in the market is indispensable.Although the government can make up for the shortcomings of market allocation resources by implementing various economic policies,the frequent changes of economic policies inevitably imply various unpredictable elements,which will increase the operational risk of corporates.At present,China’s economic downward pressure is increasing,and regulatory policies are frequently introduced.The unpredictability,opacity and ambiguity of policy adjustment make the cost of information acquisition and the degree of information asymmetry in the business environment of corporates rise simultaneously.Investment decisions need to bear greater risks,which will further aggravate corporates’ behavior of imitating investment decisions of peer corporates.Therefore,it is of practical significance to fully study the impact of external macro-factors on the investment cluster effect in the context of the uncertainty of China’s economic policy.Based on the above background,this paper takes the data of China A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2017 as a sample,and studies the corporate investment peer effect under the uncertain environment of China’s economic policy,and analyzes the investment from the perspective of managerial motivation,deeply explores the causes of the investment peer effect,and puts forward research conclusions,policy recommendations and future prospects.This paper defines peer-group corporates from the industry level,and this paper includes the following parts: introduction,literature review,theoretical basis,empirical research(four chapters)and conclusion.Firstly,in the introduction part of this paper,it clarifies the realistic and theoretical background of choosing uncertainty of economic policy,motivation of managers and peer effect of corporate investment as the research object and combs the logical relationship between the research objects.Refining and summarizing the research significance of this paper,summarizing the research content,ideas and methods used in this paper,and explaining the innovation and deficiencies of this paper.Secondly,in the part of literature review,this paper combs and summarizes the literature from three aspects: economic policy uncertainty and corporate behavior,managers and corporate behavior,corporate peer effect.Reviews the existing literature and explores the limitations of existing research and points out the starting point and ideas of this study.Thirdly,in the theoretical basis part,this paper based on information asymmetry theory,principal-agent theory,upper echelons theory,herd behavior theory and institutional theory.This paper clarifies the motivation of the peer effect in the process of investment.On this basis,it further illustrates that the uncertainty of economic policy aggravates the possibility of peer effect by deepening the problem of managers’ principal-agent and combs the logic of this paper in detail.Fourthly,empirical research on the existence and imitation path of corporate investment peer effect is also the logical starting point of empirical research in this paper.As the basis of the empirical chapter,this part verifies the existence and imitation path of the peer effect of Chinese corporates’ investment and analyses the possible characteristics of this effect.Fifthly,from the perspective of managers’ motivation,this paper elaborates the causes of investment cohort effect.That is to say,from the perspective of the bounded rationality of decision makers,the internal causes of the peer effect of corporate investment are explored.Sixth,we should further consider the moderating effect of economic policy uncertainty on investment cluster effect.Based on the conclusions of the previous paper,this part studies the impact of economic policy uncertainty and its hidden risks on the peer effect of corporate investment in the external environment.At the same time,based on the perspective of managers’ motivation,this paper explores the channels through which the uncertainty of economic policy affects the investment cluster effect of corporates.It also discusses the heterogeneity of property rights,financing constraints and irreversible process of corporate investment.Seventh,the study of economic consequences of corporate investment cluster effect.This paper analyses the economic consequences of corporate investment cluster effect from the aspects of corporate investment efficiency,corporate operation performance,corporate risk-taking ability and corporate value.At the same time,we should consider the moderating effect of economic policy uncertainty on the economic consequences of the peer effect.Finally,the conclusions and policy recommendations of this paper.Including the main research conclusions,policy recommendations,research limitations and future prospects.The specific conclusions of this paper are as follows:Firstly,in the study of the existence and imitation path of corporate investment cluster effect,we find that: Firstly,there is industry-based cluster effect in Chinese corporate investment,that is,corporate investment behavior will be positively affected by the investment behavior of the peer corporate(same industry corporate).Secondly,based on the imitation law,we expand the imitation path to analyze the effect of corporate investment in the peer,and test the difference of imitation path between the leader(leading corporate)and the laggard(following corporate)according to the principle of logical imitation.It is found that corporates usually choose those industry leaders with large scale,high market share and long listing years as reference objects.From the point of view of the nature of corporate property rights,state-owned corporates have good ability of policy prediction and analysis,as well as the advantages of easy access to information,which often become the object of learning and reference for non-state-owned corporates.Finally,in terms of geographical proximity.According to the principle of internal and external imitation,it is found that when corporates belong to the same region with the peer of corporates,the peer effect of investment is more obvious.Finally,as far as the possible complex characteristics of the peer effect are concerned,the investment changes of the peer corporates have an asymmetric impact on the direction and range of the sample corporates’ investment adjustment,but the peer effect of investment among corporates does not produce multiplier effect.Secondly,in the study of managerial motivation and corporate investment peer effect,it is found that managers’ free-rider behavior in the process of investment leads to corporate peer effect.Specifically,first,managers tend to rely on public information for decisionmaking based on disguised ability motivation,which leads to investment convergence,which is more significant when managers’ ability is weak.Second,when managers have less power,in order to enhance the recognition of their behavior by society,industry and shareholders,the investment will approach the industry average.Thirdly,in order to avoid risk loss in the process of investment,managers with older age or higher salary will adopt investment decisions consistent with those of the peer of corporates.Fourthly,with the increase of industry competitiveness and managers’ learning motivation,the investment cluster effect of corporates is more obvious.Further considering the level of corporate governance,we find that the peer effect is more significant in corporates with poor corporate governance.After distinguishing the nature of corporate property rights,it is found that compared with non-state-owned corporates,the investment cluster effect in state-owned corporates is more significant.Finally,the convergence of investment among corporates will be strengthened when the process of marketization is relatively low.Thirdly,in the study considering the uncertainty of economic policy,we find that the uncertainty of economic policy aggravates the peer effect of corporate investment.This may be due to the information noise accompanied by uncertainty,the high cost of information acquisition and potential risks,which promote corporates to approach the level of investment in the peer of corporates(corporates in the same industry).At the same time,from the perspective of managers’ influence channels,the uncertainty of economic policy strengthens managers’ competitive learning motivation,thus aggravating the investment peer effect.Finally,considering the heterogeneity of corporates,it is found that among non-state-owned corporates,corporates with higher financing constraints and corporates with higher irreversibility of investment,the aggravation effect of economic policy uncertainty on corporate investment cluster is more obvious.Fourthly,in the study of the economic consequences of the peer effect of corporate investment,we find that: Firstly,the overinvestment behavior of corporates will be positively affected by the overinvestment behavior of corporates in the peer(corporates in the same industry),the underinvestment behavior of corporates will also be positively affected by the underinvestment behavior of corporates in the peer(corporates in the same industry),and the uncertainty of economic policy aggravates the inefficient investment of corporates.Peer effect.Secondly,the effect of corporate investment cluster will reduce the business performance,the level of corporate risk-taking,corporate growth and corporate value.Thirdly,when considering the uncertainties of economic policies,the negative impact of investment cluster effect on business operation is further aggravated.Fourthly,no matter in the corporates with better or worse internal governance level,the impairment of the peer effect on the operation of corporates exists,and this difference is not obvious in the two subsample peers.The contributions and innovations of this study lie in:Firstly,from the perspective of managerial motivation,this paper provides an explanatory mechanism for the generation of corporate investment cluster effect.Starting from the point of limited rationality of corporate managers,combined with classical theories such as principal-agent theory,high-level echelon theory and herd behavior theory,this paper focuses on the decisive role of managers’ motivation in the investment of corporates in the peer behavior and the possible agency problems,which can provide a basis for effective supervision and management of corporates in irrational behavior and establish a complete restraint mechanism,and for governance and management.The problem of excessive dependence on peer firms in the decision-making process of managers has important implications.Secondly,from the perspective of social interaction,combined with the background of uncertainties in China’s current economic policy,this paper expands the research on the external factors of corporate investment cluster effect.Combining with the current situation of frequent promulgation of China’s economic policies,it is not limited to the gains and losses of a single economic policy but explores the regulatory role of uncertainty contained in economic policies on the investment cluster effect from a holistic perspective,broadening the existing research on the external factors of the investment cluster effect.Thirdly,based on the background of uncertainty of China’s economic policy,this paper tries to study the "black box" problem of macroeconomic policy affecting the investment behavior of corporates from the perspective of the peer effect,and analyses the aggravating effect of uncertainty of economic policy on the peer effect of investment based on managers’ motivation channel.From the perspective of corporate investment interaction,this paper constructs a new bridge to explain the impact of macroeconomic policies on corporate investment,helps the government to improve the economic intervention mechanism,and provides new ideas for the government to formulate macroeconomic policies rationally.Finally,this paper expands the research on the economic consequences of the peer effect.On the one hand,based on the principal-agent framework,this paper investigates the agency problem between managers and shareholders in the peer effect of corporate investment,which provides the basis for effective supervision and management of irrational behavior of corporates and the establishment of a complete contract mechanism.On the other hand,aiming at the realistic problems of overcapacity and convergence of investment in our country,this paper provides an explanation from the perspective of corporate investment interaction,and further discusses it in the light of managerial heterogeneity and the uncertain environment of economic policy.The conclusion of this study provides empirical evidence for the government to discover the excessive convergence of inter-firm investment in a timely manner and to formulate scientific and reasonable countermeasures. |
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