主讲人Speaker: 廖冠民   教授   中国人民大学

时间Date & Time: 2025年9月11日（周四），10:00--11:30

地点Venue:粤海校区汇星楼565会议室

内容简介/ Abstract:

Whether and how diversification shapes firm value is a fundamental issue in corporate governance, yet remaining on debate. We address this research question by exploiting the staggering mandates in China which force local state-owned enterprises (SOEs) into non-diversification. Beginning in 2015, China rolled out a reform requiring local SOEs to refocus in their business operations. Proven effective, the reform significantly reduced the number of divisions and the business heterogeneity across different divisions of local SOEs, relative to non-SOEs. Importantly, the non-diversification program results in an average 10% increase in treated firms’ value (proxied by Tobin’s Q). The value increase is greater for firms with more severe pre-reform agency costs and for regions with heavier policy burdens. We reveal two important causes of treated firms’ post-reform value increases: (1) improved abilities to generate future cash flows – that the reform enhances firms’ innovative output and profitability, and (2) better governance practices to prevent diversions of cash flows – that the reform reduces tunneling activities and improves corporate transparency. Our study provides causal evidence of diversification discount and reveals the causes.

主讲人介绍/Biography of the speaker：

C

廖冠民，中国人民大学商学院教授，博士生导师，党委副书记，国家级高层次人才项目青年学者。主要研究会计与公司治理、人力资本与公司财务、国有企业高管激励与监管等领域，论文发表于Journal of Finance、Journal of Accounting and Economics、Journal of International Business Studies、Review of Finance、《会计研究》、《审计研究》等学术期刊，主持四项国家自然科学基金项目，获得孙冶方金融创新奖、Review of Finance公司金融最佳论文、北京市优秀博士论文等奖励，担任Management Science、Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis、Contemporary Accounting Research、Review of Accounting Studies等期刊的审稿人。