The Value of Prominent Directors: Lessons in Corporate Governance from Transitional Japan
The Value of Prominent Directors: Lessons in Corporate Governance from Transitional Japan
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杰出董事的价值：转型时期日本公司治理的经验教训
DOI：
10.2139/ssrn.192388
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发表时间：
1999
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
J. Ramseyer
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Y. Miwa;J. Ramseyer
现代转型经济的观察家敦促那里的公司忽视股票市场。他们解释说，股市在这样的环境下根本无法运转。企业应该转而依靠债务融资，尤其是银行债务。只有这样，他们才能将委托代理（即投资者-管理者）的懈怠保持在可管理的水平。世纪之交，日本企业所面临的问题与现代东欧的问题如出一辙。然而在日本，成功的大公司并不依赖于债务。相反，他们通过股票市场筹集资金，并采取了各种措施来缓解所涉及的委托代理松弛。作为这些措施之一，他们招募了杰出的投资者进入董事会。利用棉纺业（可以说是世纪之交日本最重要的工业部门）企业的数据，我们探讨了这些企业为何招聘杰出董事。首先，我们注意到拥有这种董事的公司比其他公司利润更高。在某种程度上，他们可能有更高的利润，因为这些投资者对可能成功的公司有眼光。然而，从某种程度上讲，它们的利润似乎更高，因为这些投资者带来了基本的管理技能——他们知道如何监控，以及何时干预。其次，在突出地位保持不变的情况下，我们发现公司没有因为董事隶属于银行或其他纺织公司而获得更高的利润。有人可能会认为，有机会接触银行或掌握尖端技术的董事会提高公司的利润。事实上，他们没有，因为银行没有资金来放贷，而技术是免费的。最后，我们探讨了董事是否代表其他投资者认证公司质量。虽然拥有杰出董事的公司显然在资本市场上具有优势，但我们得出的结论是，质量认证充其量是这些董事进行监督和干预的副产品（即使是副产品）。
Observers of modern transitional economies urge firms there to ignore stock markets. Stock markets simply will not work in such environments, they explain. Firms should instead rely on debt finance, particularly bank debt. Only then will they be able to keep principal-agent (i.e., investor-manager) slack to manageable levels. Turn-of-the-century Japanese firms faced problems that closely mirrored those in modern eastern Europe. Yet in Japan, the successful large firms did not rely on debt. Instead, they raised their funds through the stock market, and took a variety of steps to mitigate the principal-agent slack involved. As one of those steps, they recruited prominent investors to their boards. Using data on firms in the cotton-spinning industry (arguably the most important industrial sector in turn-of-the-century Japan), we explore why the firms recruited prominent directors. First, we note that firms with such directors had higher profits than others. In part, they probably had higher profits because such investors had an eye for firms that would likely succeed. In part too, however, they seem to have had higher profits because those investors brought basic management skills -- they knew how to monitor and when to intervene. Second, prominence held constant, we find that firms did not have higher profits by having directors affiliated with a bank or with other spinning firms. One might have thought directors with access to a bank or spinning technology would raise profits at a firm. In fact, they did not, for banks did not have the funds to lend, and the technology was freely available. Last, we explore whether the directors certified firm quality on behalf of other investors. Although firms with prominent directors apparently did have an advantage in the capital market, we conclude that quality certification was at most a by-product (if even that) of the monitoring and intervention these directors performed.