What Gets Measured Gets Managed: Investment and the Cost of Capital

Zhiguo He (), Guanmin Liao and Baolian Wang

No 29775, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We study the impact of government-led incentive systems by examining a staggered reform in the Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE) performance evaluation policy. To improve capital allocative efficiency, in 2010, regulators switched from using return on equity (ROE) to economic value added (EVA) when evaluating SOE performance. This EVA policy adopts a one-size-fits-all approach by stipulating a fixed cost of capital for virtually all SOEs, ignoring the potential heterogeneity of firm-specific costs of capital. We show that SOEs did respond to the performance evaluation reform by altering their investment decisions, more so when the actual borrowing rate was further away from the stipulated cost of capital. Our paper provides causal evidence that incentive schemes affect real investment and sheds new light on challenges faced by economic reforms in China.

JEL-codes: G31 G38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban, nep-cfn, nep-cna, nep-cwa and nep-tra
Note: CF DEV
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Working Paper: What Gets Measured Gets Managed: Investment and the Cost of Capital (2023)
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