Abstract | For China’s economy, which is under the background of transition, "supply-side reform" is an important topic of widely concern at all times. In particular, in October 2017, "the key role of investment in optimizing the supply structure" which was pointed out in the?19th?National?Congress?of?the?Communist?Party?of?China poses an urgent need for the research field of China's economics and corporate governance. In fact, similar to the growth experience of other emerging economies in Asia, capital investment plays a key role in driving China's rapid economic growth and promoting social development. By the end of 2016, China's total GDP reached 74.41 trillion yuan, making remarkable achievements in the world. However, within the ever-increasing economic aggregate, the issue of imbalance on regional development has become increasingly prominent. As the micro-subject of economic development, the level and the structure of corporate investment directly determine the quality of regional economic growth and the process of transformation and upgrading.
Grasping the development characteristics of each regional economy, analyzing the nature and source of investment differences among different regions are of great significance to improve regional imbalance and accelerate the transformation of supply structure. Specifically, if the uncertainties that cause large differences among regional investment come mainly from the extrinsic attributes of the region (such as geographical location), then regional development problems can be balanced by taking advantage of the unique resource advantages of each region. If the issues are from the potential economic situation and the political environment within regions, then what really needs is to maintain a more friendly relationship between government and corporations or promise more marketized financial institutions. However, if they are from the "peer effects" brought by the social network of decision-making individuals in corporations, then it is necessary that according to different geographic locations, from the microscopic perspective of the enterprise, to select the appropriate industrial "peers" (distant relatives) or regional "peers" (near neighbors) to maximize the extent of "peer effects" in corporate investing.
In fact, recent research has begun to pay more and more attention to the "peer effect." Based on the unique China context, where the development and implementation of the legal system is not perfect, the market information is full of noise and the corporate governance still face many problems that are common in the emerging market countries, the "peer effect" brought by the relationship network of decision-making entities in enterprises may surpass the limitation of explanatory power of the traditional financial theories in promoting the superimposition of investment effects and accelerating the transformation of supply structure. However, existing literatures cut in from the perspective of industry peers (distant relatives) or from the perspective of geographical peers (near neighbors) to study the peer effects in the decision-making behavior of enterprises. In other words, they split apart the complicated network of relations and explain the convergence of the results of "peer effects" under the single network of relations, but pay little attention to the heterogeneity of "peer" among different network. Therefore, based on the heterogeneous perspective of "peer effect", this paper focuses on the different influence of industrial "peers" (distant relatives) and regional "peers" (near neighbors) on corporate investment decisions and the interrelationship between the two in influencing corporate investment.
Using the data of China’s A-share listed companies from 2004 to 2016, we found that: (1) Corporate investment decisions among the same industry or among the same area both appear the significant correlations. The new investment of other enterprises in the same industry or the new investment of other enterprises in the same province all have a significantly positive effect on the investment level of the certain enterprises. That is, there is an obviously "peer effect" in the investment of enterprises both at the industrial and regional levels. (2) The roles played by the industry "peer effect" and regional "peer effect" are limited by the degree of competition in the product market. In the competitive industries, the "peer effect" in the region is more obvious than the "peer effect" in the industry. And in the monopoly industry, the "peer effect" in the industry is more obvious than the "peer effect" in the region. (3) As a whole, the investment behavior of the "peers" in the industry and the investment behavior of the "peers" in the region have obvious substitutability in influencing the investment decision making of enterprises. The above findings survive various robustness tests and still stand after addressing the concerns about endogeneity.
The conclusion of this paper means that in the context of economic restructuring in China, the relationship network helps to make up for the drawbacks of marketization. What’s more, it is wiser to make trade-offs between the industry relationship network and the region relationship network according to availability and avoid such problems as over-investment or profits decline arising from blind follow-up. Our findings not only deepen and expand related researches in social relationship networks and corporate investment, but also have important implications for how to better promote industrial development and drive regional economic growth.
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