The Impact Of Financial Assets Allocation On The Main Business Profit Margin Of Non-financial Enterprises

The problem of the resources departing from real economy to the virtual has been paid much attention,and the government has mentioned promoting the resources moving from the virtual back to real economy many times,that the financial sector should serve the real economy as the foothold and starting point.In this context,this paper explores the impact of “departing from real to virtual” on the operation of real enterprises from the perspective of micro-enterprises.And the theme of the study is the impact of financial activities of non-financial enterprises on their main business performance.In order to quantify financialization,this paper uses the financial asset allocation ratio as the corresponding indicator,and take the profit margin generated by operating assets as the explained variable.This paper draws on the three types of money demand motives of Keynesian liquidity preference theory to analyze the motives of enterprises as a whole to allocate more financial assets,and analyzes the internal financialization motives of enterprises based on principal-agent theory,holding that the motivation of transaction,prevention and speculation are applicable to financial assets allocation of non-financial enterprises,and ascribes the need derived from internal development to the demand of transaction and the demand of prevention.Then,combining the motivation with the reservoir effect and the substitution effect,it is considered that the reservoir effect is mainly brought about by the motivation of transaction and prevention,while the substitution effect is mainly brought about by the motivation of speculation and the principal-agent problem.And then this paper analyzes the influence of non-financial enterprises expanding financial activities on operating performance basing on the influence chain of “motivations---financial assets allocation----reservoir effect/substitution effect---operating performance”.In order to emphasize the motivation of non-financial enterprises to expand financial activities and this chain,this paper puts forward liquidity preference effect and speculative capital gain effect.This paper combines the theory analysis with the empirical analysis,using the multiple regression model under the fixed effect to carry out the empirical analysis on the data of the non-financial and non-real estate listed enterprises from 2011 to 2020.The empirical results prove that there is no significant inverted U-shaped nonlinear relationship between the financial assets allocation ratio and operating profit margin,the negative impact on main business performance of non-financial enterprises will not be greater if the financialization of non-financial enterprises is too high or too low.There is no financial assets allocation ratio threshold,that once beyond this threshold,the impact of financial activities expansion on main business performance will change from the liquidity preference effect to the speculative capital gain effect,but always to the latter effect.However,through the analysis of marginal effect,this paper finds that with the increase of the financial assets allocation ration,its negative marginal impact on main business performance is increasing.After excluding non-linear factors,it’s found that the speculative capital gain effect dominates,and the increase in the proportion of financial assets of non-financial enterprises has a negative impact on the performance of the main business,and also has a significant inhibitory effect on the overall profit rate.The descriptive statistical results show that the performance of the main business and the allocation ratio of financial assets vary greatly among enterprises.By introducing the interaction terms of the performance of the main business,the nature of property rights,the scale of assets and the explanatory variables,the empirical analysis finds that the above three factors on the negative impacts of the increase in the allocation ratio of financial assets has a moderating effect.(1)Concerning non-financial enterprises with better main business performance,the speculative capital gain effect is weaker,the liquidity preference effect is dominant.With the decline of operating performance,the liquidity preference effect will reverse to the speculative capital gain effect.(2)Regardless of whether state-owned enterprises or private enterprises,the increase in the proportion of financial asset allocation will have a negative impact on the performance of the main business,but for state-owned non-financial enterprises,the negative impact of expanding financial activities is lower than that of private enterprises.(3)Regardless of the size of assets,the effect of speculative capital gains always dominates.However,for enterprises with higher scale of assets,the negative impact of increasing the allocation ratio of financial assets is weaker.Based on the above analysis,this paper suggests that non-financial enterprises should allocate financial assets prudently,and the development of financial activities should serve the main business,especially for non-state-owned enterprises.At the same time,in order to weaken the speculative motives,it is suggested that we should insist on supply-side reform,encourage technological innovation and improve the efficiency of enterprises;ease the financing constraints of small and medium-sized enterprises and private enterprises,encourage the development of financial institutions serving these enterprises from the policy side;persist in opening up to inject vitality into the real economy,to boost the real economy,so that capital,talent and other resources would backflow.