기부금 지출이 기업가치에 미치는 영향 - 기업의 소유구조를 중심으로

We address a basic question of corporate charitable contribution’s effect: Does it really contribute to firm’s profit maximization or shareholder value creation? Or does it just represent a drain on resources by opportunistic managers? If the capital market expects the expenditure creates the positive relation with consumers and subsequent sales increases, firm’s charitable contributions would increase the firm’s value in the capital market. On the contrary, if the capital market perceives the expenditure is more for the manager’s private gain than for the benefit of all shareholders, firm’s charitable contributions would decrease the firm’s value. Using the sample of charitable contributions by public companies from 2001 through 2006, we empirically test whether charitable contributions enhance the market value of the firm. We extend our analysis to the effects of non-tax-deductible contributions on the firm value. We hypothesize that the positive effect of charitable contributions on the firm value would decline if the amount of contributions becomes excessive. The Korean corporate tax law provides the guideline regarding how much is the excessive contribution. The tax law prescribes the limit on tax deductibility of charitable contributions up to 5%~75% of pretax income, proportions depending on the characteristics of donees. We use the amount of contribution above that limit, non-tax-deductible contribution, as the proxy for excessive contribution. Non-tax-deductible contributions could have negative impact on the firm value but only because the expenditure is excessive but also the amount does not save the tax and thus further decreases the firm’s cash flows. Still many firms in Korea report that they have paid more charitable contributions than their tax-deduction limit. A potential reason why firms would pay such excessive contributions would be that the contributions can be made for the private benefit or personal reputation of managers or large shareholders. Excessive charitable contribution could be an indicator of agency problem between managers, large shareholders and minority shareholders. Thus, we expect that the capital market perception of charitable contributions could be different between the amount within the limit and above the limit. The effects of non-tax-deductible contributions on the firm value would depend on the degree of firm’s ownerships by largest shareholders. If the firms owned by large shareholders spend excessive amounts of charitable contributions, the market would tend to perceive that the contributions are more for the private gains of managers or large shareholders than for the benefit of all investors including minority shareholders. Thus, the positive relation between charitable contributions and firm value would decline further when the firms owned by largest shareholders spend excessive amount of contributions. The effects of non-tax-deductible contributions on the firm value would also depend on the degree of firm’s ownerships by foreign investors. The effects of foreign investors on the firm’s spending pattern are not straightforward. Foreign investors may be less knowledgable of managers’ behavior than domestic investors and thus they may not monitor managers as effectively as domestic investors do. On the other hand, foreign investors may have more experiences of monitoring managers in international capital markets and thus would exercise more effective monitoring on the managers’ behavior and prevent any excessive spending intended for the managers’ private gains. We expect that the latter effect dominates in Korean capital market and the firms owned more by foreign investors would spend charitable contributions more effectively. Thus we hypothesize that the capital market values the excessive charitable contributions positively if they are spent by the firms owned foreign investors. The market perceives the charitable contributions would be paid after tight monitoring of managers’ spending by foreign investors. Thus, the positive relation between charitable contributions and firm value would increase when the firms owned by foreign investors spend excessive amount of contributions. Our empirical findings support all the hypotheses. Charitable contributions enhance shareholder value. There is no positive relationship between charitable contributions and firm value for sample firms that report excessive contributions as measured by the tax deductibility. Our results also imply that the agency cost is a prominent issue in explaining market perception of corporate contributions. We find evidence that, for firms with largest shareholders, non-tax-deductible charitable contributions are negatively related to firm value. Consistent with the expectation of effective monitoring by foreign investors, non-taxdeductible charitable contributions have significantly positive association with firm value for the sample firms with large foreign investors. We also perform various sensitivity tests including control for endogeneity and linearity between variables and conclude that out empirical findings are robust. Previous studies on charitable contributions have mostly focused on the relation between charitable contributions and firm characteristics. Our study extends the study into the relation with the firm value in the capital market. While previous studies have not used any distinction between proper amounts of charitable contribution and excessive amounts in empirical analyses, our study adopt the tax-deductibility as a benchmark for the proper level of firm’s spending on charitable contributions. We also analyze the relation between charitable contributions and firm value from the perspective of corporate ownership and find that largest shareholders and foreign investors have different impacts on the relation between charitable contributions and firm value.