本文以2003—2018年中国非金融上市公司为研究样本,实证分析贸易政策不确定性对企业投资行为的影响,并重点检验金融市场化在弱化贸易政策不确定性冲击中所发挥的作用。结果显示,贸易政策不确定性会抑制企业投资,而金融市场化能够显著弱化贸易政策不确定性对企业投资的负向冲击。通过替换核心指标、改变模型设定和控制内生性问题后,上述结论依然稳健。在机制上,金融市场化会通过缓解融资约束、降低风险承担及提高全要素生产率弱化贸易政策不确定性对企业投资的负向冲击。进一步的异质性分析表明,金融市场化缓解贸易政策不确定性对企业投资的抑制效应在高融资约束、外部融资依赖、资本密集型、高技术企业中尤为明显。因此,在全球不确定性加剧的背景下,进一步深化金融市场化改革有利于平滑贸易政策不确定性的负向冲击,对于促进实体经济平稳、健康、有序发展具有重要的实践指导意义。

Substantial evidence shows that the continuous fermentation of conflicts of interest has hindered the process of global economic integration. In order to cope with the negative impact of trade tensions, the Chinese government has adopted various trade policies to help firms overcome the difficulties and promote their orderly development. However, the frequent adjustment of trade policies leads to higher policy uncertainties, which would undoubtedly have an important impact on the investment behavior and normal operation of firms.
This paper empirically analyzes the impact of trade policy uncertainty on the investment behavior of Chinese non-financial listed firms from 2003 to 2018, and focuses on the potential role of financial marketization.
The results show that trade policy uncertainty inhibits firm investment, while financial marketization significantly weakens the negative impact of trade policy uncertainty on firm investment. By replacing the key variables, changing the model setting and controlling the endogenous problems, the above conclusions are still robust. For the underlying mechanism, financial marketization weakens the negative impact of trade policy uncertainty mainly through easing financing constraints, reducing risk-taking and enhancing total factor productivity. Heterogeneity analysis further suggests that financial marketization alleviates the adverse effect of trade policy uncertainty on investment especially for firms with high financing constraints and external financing dependence, and those capital-intensive and high-tech firms.
The marginal contributions of this paper lie in two important ways. Firstly, based on the practices of trade development between China and other countries, this paper explores the impact of trade policy uncertainty on firm investment, and examines the potential role of financial marketization, which is of great theoretical significance to clarify the internal mechanism of trade policy uncertainty and financial marketization affecting firm investment. Secondly, while previous studies focused more on the average effect of economic policy uncertainty on corporate investment behavior without considering the heterogeneity across firms with different levels of financing constraints, this paper concentrates on exploring the potential role of deepening financial market reform in weakening the negative effects of unexpected external shocks, providing important implications for the government to further promote financial supply side structural reform and maintain the steady and healthy development of China's economy.