Economic Policy Uncertainty, Managerial Ability, and the Peer Effect of Corporate Investment
Table 1
Variable definition.
Variables
Variable symbol
Calculation
Investment rate
INV1
The difference between the cash paid for the purchase and construction of fixed assets, intangible assets, and other long-term assets and the net cash recovered from the disposal of fixed assets, intangible assets, and other long-term assets divided by the total assets at the beginning of the period
INV2
Cash paid for the acquisition and construction of fixed assets, intangible assets, and other long-term assets divided by the total assets at the beginning of the period
Peer-firm-average investment rate
r
Based on INV1 calculation, industry-annual average of business investment (sample enterprises excluded)
r
Based on INV2 calculation, industry-annual average of business investment (sample enterprises excluded)
Economic policy uncertainty index
EPU
Based on the calculation method of Gulen and Ion [5], this paper gives the weighted average of 1/84, 2/84, …, 12/84 for 12 months in a year, obtains the annual uncertainty index of China’s economic policy, and then divides it by 100
Managerial ability
MA
Refer to Demerjian et al. [22], using two-stage regression calculation
Enterprise nature
State
Property right nature of the enterprise; if the property right nature is state-owned enterprise, it is recorded as 1; otherwise, it is recorded as 0
Enterprise scale
Size
The natural logarithm of a firm’s total assets at the end
Tobin Q
Tobin Q
Enterprise Tobin Q’s value
Financial leverage
Lev
Corporate asset-liability ratio, corporate total liabilities/total assets
Growth ability
Growth
Business revenue growth rate
Operating cash flow
Ocf
Net cash flow generated by business activities/total assets
Cash holdings
Cash
Corporate monetary capital holdings, year-end monetary capital/total assets
Profitability
Roa
Return on total assets, net profit/total assets
Proportion of fixed assets
Tangible
Net fixed assets/total
Duality
Duality
If the chairman and general manager of the enterprise are the same person, it is marked as 1; otherwise, it is 0
Shareholding ratio of the largest shareholder
First
Shareholding ratio of the largest shareholder
Industry dummy variable
Industry
Guidelines on Industry Classification of Listed Companies (2012 edition), China Securities Regulatory Commission, as an industry classification standard
Year dummy variable
Year
Set it to 1 if it belongs to the year; otherwise, set it to 0
