MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING OF VIETNAM UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY [Company name] [Document title]TU THI KIM THOA [Document subtitle] Firms’ Investment – Cash Flow Relationship In The Context Of State Ownership And Banking System Reform In Vietnam DOCTORAL THESIS Kim Thoa Tu Ho Thi Chi Minh City, June 2020 [Date] luan an i MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING OF VIETNAM UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY TU THI KIM THOA Firms’ Investment – Cash Flow Relationship In The Context Of State Ownership And Banking System Reform In Vietnam DOCTORAL THESIS Specialization: Finance and Banking Code: 9340201 Supervisors: VU VIET QUANG, Ph. NGUYEN THI UYEN UYEN, Ph. Kim Thoa Tu Thi [Date] Ho Chi Minh City, 2020 luan an ii STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and except where due reference is made; this thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person(s). This thesis does not contain material extracted in whole or in part from a thesis or report presented for another degree or diploma at University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City or any other education institution.
Tu Thi Kim Thoa June 2020 luan an iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express deepest gratitude to my supervisors, Dr. Vu Viet Quang and Dr. Nguyen Thi Uyen Uyen, for their continual guidance and mentorship, invaluable support, remarkable patience, useful feedback, and spiritual encouragement during the completion of my thesis. My thesis can not be completed without their supervisions, which provided me with much precious advice to expedite my thesis completion.
I would like to thank the University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City for its generous financial support of my PhD studies. I also wish to thank all the colleagues at the UEH School of Finance, School of UEH Graduates and others for their great and continuing encouragement and full support during my PhD candidature. My gratitude also goes to my colleagues at UEH who have constantly given a great help, support and encouragements to me not only during but also before the completion of my thesis. Finally and most importantly, I would like to thank my friends and family for their unconditional love, immense, constant and endless support and encouragements during my life.
I would have been unable to finish the thesis without their supports and encouragement. And I also wish to dedicate this thesis to my late mother who is always in my heart. luan an i TABLE OF CONTENTS ABBREVIATIONS. i LIST OF TABLES.
ii LIST OF FIGURES. vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION. Firm’s investment – cash flow relationship in the context of state ownership in Vietnam. Objectives and hypotheses.
Firm’s investment – cash flow relation in the context of banking system reform in Vietnam. Objectives and hypotheses. 10 CHAPTER 2: OVERVIEW ON VIETNAM’S ECONOMIC REFORMS. Overview on Vietnam’s economy.
Overview on equitization of state owned enterprises of Vietnam. Overview on Vietnam’s banking system reform. 29 luan an ii CHAPTER 3: FINANCIAL CONSTRAINTS AND INVESTMENT: A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND LITERATURE REVIEW. Theories of investment.
The Modigliani-Miller Theorem (MM). Neo-classical model. Sales accelerator model. The Euler model.
Financial constraints and investment: a literature review. Financial constraint and investment. State Ownership and Investment–Cash Flow Relations. Banking system reform and investment – cash flow relation.
Financial leverage, growth opportunity and investment relation. 53 CHAPTER 4: FIRM’S INVESTMENT – CASH FLOW RELATIONSHIP IN THE CONTEXT OF STATE OWNERSHIP IN VIETNAM. The study introduction. Literature review and hypothesis development.
Relation between investment and cash flow. State Ownership and Investment–Cash Flow Relations. State Ownership and Investment–Leverage Relation. Testing Investment–Cash Flow Relation.
Testing the Impact of State Ownership on Investment–Cash Flow Relations. Testing the Impact of State Ownership on Investment–Leverage Relations. 68 luan an iii 4. 93 CHAPTER 5: FIRM’S INVESTMENT – CASH FLOW RELATIONSHIP UNDER THE CONTEXT OF BANKING SYSTEM REFORM IN VIETNAM.
The Stuty Introduction. Investment – cash flow relation. Effect of banking system reform on investment – cash flow relation. Hypothesis development and model specification.
Firm’s investment – cash flow relationship in the context of state ownership in Vietnam. Research contributions, implications and policy recommendations. Research limitations and future research directions. 136 luan an iv 6.
Firm’s investment – cash flow relationship in the context of banking system reform in Vietnam. Research contributions , implications and policy recommendations 138 6. Research limitations and future research directions. 140 LIST OF AUTHOR’S PUBLICATIONS.
148 luan an i ABBREVIATIONS Agribank Vietnam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development ASEAN Association of Southest Asian Nations ATFA ASEAN Free Trade Agreement BIDV Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam CPI Comsumer Price Index FDI Foreign direct investment GDP Gross Domestic Products HCMC Ho Chi Minh City HNX Hanoi Stock Exchange HOSE Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange JSCB Joint-stock commercial bank JVB Joint – venture bank MM Modigliany and Miller Theorem SBV State Bank of Vietnam SOCB State-owned commercial bank SOE State owned enterprise US United States of America VCB Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam Vietinbank Vietnam Industrial and Commercial Banks WTO World Trade Organization luan an ii LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1 Main economic indicators of Vietnam, 1986 – 2018 19 Table 2.2 Stages of SOE equitization in Vietnam (1992 – 2018) 21 Table 2.3 Credit institutions of Vietnam, 2010 - 2017 26 Table 2.4 Foreign banks’ branches in Vietnam 27 Table 3.1 Summary of Financial Constraint Proxies 47 Table 4.1 Sample structure 68 Table 4.2 Variable descriptive statistic 69 Table 4.3 Differences between non state-owned and state-owned 70 enterprises Table 4.4 Analysis of relation between investment and cash flow 73 Table 4.5 Impact of state ownership on investment – cash flow 76 relation Table 4.6 Impact of state ownership on relation between investment 78 and cash flow under different growth opportunities Table 4.7 Impact of state ownership on the investment and leverage 81 relations Table 4.8 Impact of state ownership on the relations between 82 investment - leverage under different growth opportunities luan an iii Table 4.9 State ownership and relations between investment and cash 84 flow under different growth opportunities: GMM estimation method Table 4.10 Classification of state-owned and non-state-owned 87 enterprises using the threshold of 33.11 State ownership and relations between investment and cash 90 flow under different growth opportunities in which high growth opportunity is classified by quartile Table 5.1 Sample structure 107 Table 5.2 Variable descriptive statistic 108 Table 5.3 Pearson and Spearman correlation matrix 110 Table 5.4 Analysis of investment - cash flow relation 115 Table 5.5 Effect of banking system reform on investment – cash flow 119 relation Table 5.6 Effect of banking system reform on investment –cash flow 122 relation of state – controlled listed companies by different growth opportunities.7 Effect of banking system reform on investment –cash flow 124 relation of non state – controlled companies by different growth opportunities luan an iv Table 5.8 Effect of banking system reform on investment – leverage 126 relation Table 5.9 Effect of banking system reform on investment – leverage 128 relation for both low and high growth opportunities Table 5.10 GMM estimates of investment – cash flow sensitivity 129 luan an v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1 Annual GDP growth rate for the period of 1986 – 2018 (%) 13 Figure 2.2 Vietnam’s Inflation (% change of CPI), 1986-2018 15 Figure 2.3 Vietnam’s volume of imports and exports (% of GDP), 16 1986-2018 Figure 2.4 Vietnam’s Foreign Direct Investment, net inflows (% of 18 GDP) Figure 2.5 Progress of SOE equitization, 1992 – 2018 22 Figure 2.6 Number of SOEs, 1995 - 2017 24 Figure 5.1 Fitted value of investment (IK) on cash flow (CFK) on a 112 full sample of Vietnamese listed firms for the period of 2009 – 2014 Figure 5.2 Fitted value of investment (IK) on cash flow (CFK) on a 113 subsample of Vietnamese State controlled firms for the period of 2009 - 2014 Figure 5.3 Fitted value of investment (IK) on cash flow (CFK) on a 114 subsample of Vietnamese Non - state controlled firms for the period of 2009 - 2014 luan an vi ABSTRACT This thesis applies the style of a series of papers in the field of corporate finance, which mainly composes of the two stand-alone essays. The first essay investigates the effect of state ownership on the relationship between investment and cash flow in Vietnam, a small transitional economy. Using a sample of companies listed on the both Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchanges (HOSE) and Hanoi Stock Exchange (HNX) during the period 2008 to 2015, the U- shaped investment–cash flow relations for both state-owned and non-state-owned firms are found. In addition, state-owned companies (SOEs) have higher cash flow sensitivity of investment, which perhaps is due to their socioeconomic and political responsibilities, poor corporate governance and agency problem.
Their growth opportunities also affect the sensitivity. The second essay examines the effect of banking system reform, which is defined by the presence of foreign banks, on investment-cash flow relation in a context of a small transition economy. I find evidence that the presence of foreign banks in Vietnam results in decreasing in firm’s dependence on local banks and has changed their financial constraint. Company investments are less reliant on internal cash flow in the post reform period.
Although overinvestment of state controlled firms can not be reduced but underinvestment problem of non- state -controlled listed firms is mitigated due to better accessibility to bank loans. The investigated relation between investment and leverage is robust for this conclusion. JEL classification: G30, G31, G32 Keywords: financial constraints, investment – cash flow relations, state ownership, banking system reform, small transition economy. luan an 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION This thesis applies the style of a series of papers in the field of corporate finance, which mainly composes of the two stand-alone essays.
This chapter summarizes the content of the thesis, which brieftly presents the thesis’ motivations, objectives, methodologies, contributions and structure.1 presents the thesis motivations on impact of financial constraints, particularly state ownership and banking system reform on firm’s investment – cash flows of a transition economy, Vietnam.2 introduces the research objectives.4 respectively summarize the two essays: firm’s investment – cash flow relation under the context of state ownership in Vietnam and firm’s investment – cash flow relation under the context of banking system reform in Vietnam.5 presents the structure of the thesis. Thesis motivations The thesis was inspired by the following motivations: Firstly, investment is one of the most important decisions in corporate financial decisions. The company managers will make all of efforts to conduct positive NPV investment opportunities because these investmens are expected to increase the firm value. Beside availability of positive NPV investment opportunities, the availability of financing funds (internal or/and external) is another important factor affecting the firm’s investments.
Therefore, relationship between investment and cash flows, especially in the context of financial constraints have attracted luan an 2 interests of many scholars. Fazzari, Hubbard, Petersen, Blinder, and Poterba (1988) show that financially contrained firms have high investment – cash flow sensitivities because of higher cost of external funds in compared with that of internal funds. Different types of the relationhip between investment and cash flow have been found in financial literatures. Fazzari et al.
So, there is no consistent relation between investment and cash flows found in the literatures. Moreover, the relation has not been under-investigated for Vietnam context. Secondly, the investment – cash flow sensitivity is one of commonly used measures of financial constraint which is defined as a limit in capital accessibility, either internally or externally. In the context of transition economy like China and Vietnam, the role of state ownership on financial constraints has been unclear.
Many studies shows evidence that state-ownership does have impact on firm financial constraints, i.