How antitrust enforcement affects corporate ESG performance? Evidence from merger review cases in China

IF 7.9 2区经济学 Q1 ECONOMICS

Economic Analysis and Policy Pub Date : 2024-11-01 DOI:10.1016/j.eap.2024.10.037

Fang Yi, Chenru Cao, Jingxuan Xu

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Chinese unique treatment of unreported merger cases (which should be reported according to antitrust law) in the context of merger review provides a distinctive and robust control group for the Difference-in-Differences (DID) research method. We employ the DID method to investigate the impact of China’s merger review antitrust enforcement on Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) performance. We find that the implementation of merger review antitrust enforcement suppresses corporate ESG performance, especially with significant effects observed on the Environment (E) and Governance (G) components. Mechanism analysis indicates that antitrust enforcement poses an impact on corporate profits by reducing market concentration and safeguarding fair market competition. This leads to the emergence of corporate financial performance protection behaviors, resulting in a decrease in corporate ESG performance. Heterogeneous analysis finds that the use of structural remedy in the enforcement process and stronger antitrust enforcement will further intensify the inhibitory effect of antitrust enforcement against business concentration on ESG.

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反垄断执法如何影响企业ESG绩效？来自中国兼并审查案例的证据

中国在兼并审查中对未报告兼并案件（根据反垄断法应当报告）的独特处理方式，为差分法（DID）研究方法提供了一个独特而稳健的控制组。我们采用 DID 方法研究了中国兼并审查反垄断执法对环境、社会和治理（ESG）绩效的影响。我们发现，并购审查反垄断执法的实施抑制了企业的环境、社会和治理绩效，尤其是对环境（E）和治理（G）部分产生了显著影响。机制分析表明，反垄断执法通过降低市场集中度和维护市场公平竞争对企业利润产生影响。这导致了企业财务绩效保护行为的出现，从而降低了企业的环境、社会和治理绩效。异质性分析发现，在执法过程中使用结构性补救措施和加强反垄断执法力度将进一步强化反垄断执法对企业集中度对 ESG 的抑制作用。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Economic Analysis and Policy ECONOMICS-

CiteScore

9.80

自引率

9.20%

发文量

231

审稿时长

93 days

期刊介绍： Economic Analysis and Policy (established 1970) publishes articles from all branches of economics with a particular focus on research, theoretical and applied, which has strong policy relevance. The journal also publishes survey articles and empirical replications on key policy issues. Authors are expected to highlight the main insights in a non-technical introduction and in the conclusion.