| Investment activities,as a core component of business operations and development,provide a continuous impetus for long-term corporate development.In recent years,the severe and complex economic environment coupled with the repeated impact of the new epidemic has put enterprises under severe external pressure.The uncertainty of the investment environment has led to many inefficient investments and ineffective investments,coupled with the dual friction of information asymmetry and agency problems,inefficient investments have become an important factor hindering the high-quality development of enterprises.Efficient investment is not only an important means to enhance the value of enterprises,but also an important force for high-quality economic development.Therefore,how to effectively avoid inefficient investment behavior in the investment process and enhance investment efficiency has gradually become a hot topic of discussion among experts and scholars.As a mature investment body in the capital market,institutional investors have become indispensable in corporate governance as their investment scale and shareholding ratio have increased year by year.Although institutional investors have high expectations in corporate governance,no uniform conclusion has been reached on how effective their governance is.Therefore,it is important to investigate the impact of institutional investors on corporate investment efficiency and to test whether they can improve corporate investment efficiency in order to clarify the role of institutional investors in corporate governance.In addition to this,it is also important to explore the specific mechanisms underlying the governance role of institutional investors and the possible differences in their governance role under different types of investors and governance environments.This paper explores the impact of institutional investors’ shareholding on corporate investment efficiency based on principal-agent theory,information asymmetry theory and stakeholder theory,and tests whether agency costs and financing constraints play a mediating role between the two,based on which the research hypothesis of this paper is proposed.This paper selects non-financial listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen A-shares from 2008-2021 as the object of empirical research,and after screening and collating,the final 28,785 firmannual observations of 3516 companies are obtained,so as to carry out empirical tests.The study shows that:(1)institutional investors’ shareholding has a significant inhibiting effect on corporate inefficient investment,and the higher the proportion of institutional shareholding,the more it helps to enhance corporate investment efficiency.Similarly,institutional investors’ shareholding discourages over-investment and alleviates under-investment;(2)agency costs and financing constraints partially mediate the relationship between institutional investors’ shareholding and corporate inefficient investment,i.e.institutional investors reduce agency costs and alleviate financing constraints,thereby discouraging corporate inefficient investment;(3)compared with transactional institutional investors,stable institutional investors are more effective in(3)Compared with transactional institutional investors,stable institutional investors are more effective in enhancing corporate investment efficiency,discouraging over-investment and alleviating under-investment;(4)The impact of institutional investors’ shareholding on corporate investment efficiency is more significant when the rule of law environment is poor,the industry is less competitive,the quality of internal control is good and the quality of internal governance is high.This article takes the external governance mechanism of the firm-institutional investors-as the entry point of the study and explores the mechanism of the impact of institutional investors’ shareholding on corporate investment efficiency,verifying the supervisory governance effect played by institutional investors on the one hand,and the resource relief effect played by institutional investors from the perspective of the resource advantages they possess on the other,and examining the specific impact mechanisms from these two aspects.In addition,the article further explores the differences in the role of institutional investors in the governance of investment efficiency in different internal and external governance environments,further complementing the lack of contextual factor analysis in exploring the relationship between institutional investors and corporate investment efficiency.In practice,it provides certain insights and references for enterprises to optimize their governance structure and improve their investment level. |
