Foreign ownership and investment efficiency: new evidence from an emerging market
International Journal of Emerging Markets
ISSN: 1746-8809
Article publication date: 16 March 2020
Issue publication date: 21 April 2020
Abstract
Purpose
This paper investigates the effect of foreign ownership on corporate investment efficiency in an emerging market.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper employs the investment-investment opportunities sensitivity to proxy for investment efficiency. Corporate investment and investment opportunities are measured by capital expenditure and Tobin's Q respectively. Control variables include state ownership, firm profitability, cash flow, financial leverage, firm size, bank debt, asset tangibility and financial distress. The research sample includes 5,502 firm-years from 621 firms listed in Vietnamese stock market from 2007 to 2017.
Findings
We find that foreign ownership negatively affects corporate investment efficiency. Furthermore, we continue to examine the effects of foreign ownership with financially unconstrained and constrained firms that are classified based on the annual medians of Kaplan and Zingales (1997) score, firm size and dividend payout ratio. We find that the negative relationship between foreign ownership and investment efficiency is stronger in financially unconstrained.
Originality/value
Prior research shows that foreign ownership is positively related to corporate investment efficiency. However, in Vietnamese stock market, foreign investors may prefer safe business activities as a response to uncertainty in the business environment, ineffective legislations on corporate governance and their informational disadvantage. Therefore, in this paper, we argue that foreign ownership negatively affects Vietnamese firms' investment efficiency. Risk-adverse foreign investors make firms lose some profitable investment opportunities and thus decrease their investment efficiency.
Keywords
Citation
Tran, Q.T. (2020), "Foreign ownership and investment efficiency: new evidence from an emerging market", International Journal of Emerging Markets, Vol. 15 No. 6, pp. 1185-1199. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJOEM-07-2019-0573
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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