债券契约与投资现金流敏感性研究

我国债券市场快速发展，债券融资逐渐成为了企业融资的主要选择之一，与此同时，债券违约事件不断发生，打破了投资者固有的“刚性兑付”、“国企信仰”等观念，引起了各界的普遍关注。为了防范发行主体的违约风险，债权人和发行人之间会签订债券契约以明确双方的权利和义务，债券契约通过限制、规范公司管理层以及股东的行为对债权人提供保护，缓解信息不对称带来的融资约束与代理问题，对公司不合理的投资行为产生约束，进而提高公司的投资效率。本文基于手工收集的2010-2020年发行债券的契约信息，构建了债券契约指数，搭建非对称面板，使用固定效应模型研究了债券契约指数对公司投资现金流敏感性的作用。研究发现，公司的债券契约指数提高有助于降低投资现金流敏感性，即完备的债券契约可以提高公司的投资效率，并且债券契约对投资现金流敏感性的影响是通过缓解公司的代理问题实现的。进一步的检验显示，债券契约对公司投资效率的提高在股东权利更集中、管理层道德风险更高、内部控制更差的公司中效果更加显著，从侧面证明了代理问题在投资现金流敏感性中的作用。最后，本文发现债券契约对投资效率的影响在国有企业中更加显著，合理的解释为国有企业的投资现金流敏感性更多的来自代理冲突，而非国有企业的投资现金流敏感性更多的来自融资约束。本文的结论表明，债券契约能够提升公司内部治理水平，从公司投资效率的角度回答了发行人关注的“事前减低代理成本与事后限制公司灵活性”之间的权衡问题，为发行人实现公司价值最大化的目标提供理论支撑和实践建议。

China's bond market has experienced swift growth, making bond financing a pivotal choice for corporate funding. Concurrently, the rise in bond defaults has shattered the traditional investor confidence in "guaranteed repayment" and "state enterprise trust," attracting significant attention. To mitigate the risk of issuer default, bond covenants are established between creditors and issuers to define rights and obligations, protect creditors, alleviate financing constraints, and enhance corporate investment efficiency by curbing agency problems and excessive investment behaviors. This study utilizes a hand-collected dataset of bond covenants from 2010 to 2020 to create a bond covenant index and examines its effect on corporate investment cash flow sensitivity using a fixed-effect model. Findings suggest that a higher bond covenant index reduces investment cash flow sensitivity, indicating that comprehensive covenants can improve investment efficiency by addressing agency issues. Further analysis reveals that bond covenants are particularly effective in firms with concentrated ownership, higher management risk, and weaker internal controls, highlighting the role of agency problems. The study also finds that the impact of bond covenants on investment efficiency is more pronounced in state-owned enterprises due to their predominant agency conflicts, unlike non-state-owned firms, where financing constraints are the primary concern. The findings imply that bond covenants can enhance internal governance and provide theoretical and practical insights for issuers aiming to maximize corporate value while balancing the trade-off between reducing agency costs and maintaining operational flexibility.

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