Research On The Effect Of Economic Policy Uncertainty On Corporate Savings Rate

Since the reform and opening,China’s national savings rate has been rising.Studies have shown that rising corporate savings is the main reason for rising national savings rates.Corporate savings rate has attracted widespread attention and research of scholars.This article starts from the influencing factors of corporate savings rate and bases on the background that economic policy uncertainty has a profound impact on micro-enterprises’ behaviors,studying the effect and mechanism of economic policy uncertainty on corporate saving behaviors.This study can improve the continuous growth of the corporate savings rate,form a more reasonable economic structure,and it is of great significance to alleviate the problem of China’s high savings rate.An empirical study is conducted by using unbalanced panel data from 2006 to 2017 of all non-financial listed companies.We study the impact of economic policy uncertainty on corporate savings rates,and the impact mechanism of economic policy uncertainty on the corporate savings rate basing on the perspective of corporate R & D expenditure and corporate financing constraints.Besides,we study the difference among the savings rate of heterogeneous enterprises affected by the uncertainty of economic policies.The entire sample of enterprises is divided according to the heterogeneity of enterprise attributes,the heterogeneity of enterprise size,and the heterogeneity of enterprise regions,including state-owned enterprise groups and non-state-owned enterprise groups,large-scale enterprise groups and small-scale enterprise groups,and Eastern region enterprise groups,Central region enterprise groups and Western region enterprise Group.The research results show that there is a positive correlation between economic policy uncertainty and corporate savings rates.When economic policy uncertainty rises,companies save more,and the corporate savings rate rises.On the one hand,when the uncertainty of economic policy increases,enterprises’ R & D expenditure is suppressed,which increases corporate savings,the higher the R & D expenditure is,the stronger the effect of economic policy uncertainty on saving rate is;On the other hand,when the uncertainty of economic policy increases,companies face greater financing constraints,fewer channels for external financing and costs larger,companies tend to replace external financing with internal funds and increase savings,the greater the financing constraints,the stronger the effect of economic policy uncertainty on the enterprise savings rate is.Therefore,the uncertainty of economic policy affects the saving rate of enterprises through the channels of R & D expenditure and financing constraints.In addition,when economic policy uncertainty rises,the savings rate of state-owned enterprises will increase more than non-state-owned enterprises.The savings rate of small-scale enterprises will increase more than that of large-scale enterprises.The savings rate of enterprises in the western region enterprises will increase more than the central region and Eastern region enterprises.