Abstract: In recent years, some international studies have found that the deferred payment of executive compensation, that is, executive deferred compensation, can enable executives to operate enterprises more cautiously, adopt more conservative financial policies, and lower the financial leverage of enterprises. It can be said that executive deferred compensation is an important factor affecting the corporate debt. Some non-financial state-owned enterprises in China have always deferred the payment of part of executive compensation. In addition to the central state-owned enterprises, some local state-owned enterprises also have a deferred compensation system for executives. So, can the executive deferred compensation system applied in some non-financial state-owned enterprises have a governance effect on leverage? This paper aims to address this question.
This paper argues that the deferred compensation system for executives of state-owned enterprises binds the interests of senior executives and creditors together, serving as a self-restraint mechanism for senior executives. In order to ensure that they receive deferred compensation, senior executives will adopt more conservative financial policies and take the initiative to assume the due obligations of existing debts, so as to effectively curb the high leverage of state-owned enterprises caused by soft budget constraints and ownership dividends. Taking China's A-share state-owned listed companies as the research sample, this paper finds that executive deferred compensation can significantly reduce the leverage ratio of state-owned enterprises and has a direct governance effect. Further mechanism tests show that senior executives' deferred compensation reduces leverage by reducing the borrowing of new loans to pay old debts as well as the excessive debt of state-owned enterprises. The impact mechanism is also verified from the perspective of comparison between state-owned enterprises and private enterprises and the perspective of inhibiting high-risk investment. Further analysis at the end of this paper shows that the leverage ratio of state-owned enterprises with executive deferred compensation system after deleveraging is significantly lower than that of state-owned enterprises before deleveraging or those without executive deferred compensation system, which indicates that the executive deferred compensation system can coordinate with the deleveraging policy and has a synergistic governance effect on the leverage ratio of state-owned enterprises.
The main contributions of this paper are as follows. First, this paper provides supporting evidence that senior executives' deferred compensation has the governance effect of “accomplishing great task with little force”, which has some implications for how to design a precise mechanism of state-owned enterprises' leverage ratio governance under the current economic background, and helps to reduce the leverage ratio manipulation caused by the one-size-fits-all policy and the high institutional transaction costs caused by the “accidental injury” to the economy. Second, the existing research on the governance of leverage ratio of non-financial state-owned enterprises mainly focuses on the external governance mechanism of enterprises, such as tax reduction and fee reduction, interest rate marketization, financial technology, control of government fiscal deficit and expenditure, and streamlining of the financial relationship between the central and local governments. This paper discusses the governance of leverage ratio of state-owned enterprises from the perspective of internal governance of enterprises, which is an important supplement to the existing literature from the perspective of external governance of enterprises. Finally, at present, domestic research on senior executives' deferred compensation mainly focuses on the financial industry. The research on senior executives' deferred compensation in non-financial state-owned enterprises in this paper is also an effective supplement to the existing research literature on senior executives' deferred compensation in the financial industry.

Key words: Executive Deferred Compensation, State-owned Enterprise, Leverage Ratio, Deleveraging Policy

摘要： 在百年未有大变局之急需提振经济的情况下,一刀切的去杠杆政策可能对经济有所“误伤”,在实践中一直应用却被理论研究忽略的高管递延薪酬制度能否成为国企杠杆率的精准治理机制值得研究。以A股国有上市公司为样本,本文发现,高管递延薪酬显著降低了国企杠杆率,有直接治理效应;同时,其能与去杠杆政策协同,对国企杠杆率产生协同治理效应。本文研究结果表明,高管递延薪酬制度是国企杠杆率的有效治理机制,能起到“四两拨千斤”的治理效果。

关键词: 高管递延薪酬, 国有企业, 杠杆率, 去杠杆政策