Research On The Impact Of Economic Policy Uncertainty On Corporate Investment Behavior

The global financial crisis in 2008 increased corporate expectations of economic policy uncertainty,which in turn had an important impact on corporate investment behavior.In order to get rid of the economic difficulties as soon as possible,governments have taken the initiative to increase their intervention in the real economy,and the frequency of economic policy adjustments has further increased the degree of uncertainty in economic policies.Corporate investment decisions are critical to their operations,and economic policies are one of the important factors that influence corporate investment decisions.When enterprises face the impact of economic policy uncertainty,their investment behavior will change accordingly.Therefore,it is of great significance to study the impact of economic policy uncertainty on corporate investment behavior.This paper carefully combs the literature on economic policy uncertainty and corporate investment,and finds that scholars mostly examine the relationship between the two based on a single perspective of real options or financial friction.This paper puts these two perspectives under the same analytical framework,and uses the China Economic Policy Uncertainty Index from the second quarter of 2003 to the fourth quarter of 2017 and the manufacturing company data of the A-share listed on the main board of the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets.The two dimensions of expenditure level and investment efficiency empirically test the impact of economic policy uncertainty on heterogeneous corporate investment behavior.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows:(1)The uncertainty of economic policy has a significant negative impact on the level of corporate investment expenditure,and has a significant positive impact on corporate investment efficiency.(2)The real option perspective and the financial friction perspective effectively explain the impact of economic policy uncertainty on corporate investment behavior,but the real option perspective is more suitable to explain the investment behavior of Chinese manufacturing listed companies under uncertain economic policies.(3)Corporate growth opportunities and external demand have alleviated the negative impact of economic policy uncertainty on corporate investment spending to a certain extent.The contributions of this paper are as follows:(1)Most of the existing researches examine the limitations of the relationship between economic policy uncertainty and corporate investment behavior based on a single perspective,and put the real option perspective and financial friction perspective under the same framework to construct economic policy uncertainty.The theoretical framework that affects the level of investment expenditure and investment efficiency of enterprises,and identifies the perspective of real options is more suitable to explain the changes in investment behavior of listed companies in China's manufacturing industry under uncertain economic policies.It is the enrichment and expansion of existing research.(2)In view of the existing literature,the uncertainty of economic policy affects the investment behavior of enterprises,focusing on the limitations of investment expenditure level.This paper examines the investment behavior under the uncertainty of economic policy from the two dimensions of enterprise investment expenditure and investment efficiency.It also examines the moderating role played by growth opportunities and external demand heterogeneity.It has certain guiding significance for heterogeneous enterprises to choose appropriate investment behavior under the impact of economic policy uncertainty.