국민연금 투자가 기업의 원가행태에 미치는 영향

One of the main causes of cost stickiness is agency problem such as empire building. This study empirically analyzes whether the national pension as a blockholder mitigates asymmetric cost behavior by effectively restricting managers' private interest seeking behavior. Specifically this study examines whether the stickiness of discretionary costs is alleviated when the national pension is the major shareholders (blockholders) with more than 5%. In domestic commercial law shareholders with more than 5% ownership may have more direct impact on the management decisions. In addition, by analyzing the cost behavior of profit and loss firms, it is verified that the importance of shareholders' role is changing according to the profit level of the firms. The result shows the stickiness of SG & A expenses is alleviated in firms where the national pension has more than 5% of the equity holdings. This can be interpreted as an evidence that the national pension plays a role of limiting the private incentives of managers as a blockholder. In the tests made for the subsample of profit firms and that of loss firms we found that the stickiness of SG & A expenses is not alleviated in the profit firms, whereas the stickiness is significantly reduced in the loss firms. This implies that, when the performance of the investee firm is weak, the national pension exercises a strong influence on the cost performance of the firm by strengthening the intensity of the monitoring role in consideration of the risk of the return on investment (gain on sale, dividend, etc.). However, it can be interpreted that the national pension as blockholders did not reduce the agency cost of the investee firms, but that the national pension had invested in a firm with low agent cost. In other words, the question of self-selection bias can be raised. Therefore, in order to secure the robustness of this study, the effects of major shareholders conversion is additionally analyzed. As a result of the analysis, in the case of firms with no national pension shareholders in year t-1, but with the transition of the national pension to major shareholders in year t, the stickiness of SG & A expenses is alleviated. This is evidence supporting the claim that the national pension plays a role of improving corporate governance, which significantly controls moral hazard incentives such as privileged consumption or over-investment of CEO. This study shows that the shareholder activism of the national pension in the investee firms is working effectively through an empirical analysis of the asymmetric cost behavior, and thus provides a support for the positive monitoring role of the national pension. It also provides implications for the future fund management strategy of the National Pension Fund, which has huge fund size and potential influence in the capital market, and for the efficiency improvement measures in the capital market. In addition, this study explains how corporate governance can affect the asymmetric cost behavior related to the agency problem, thereby widens our understanding of the asymmetry of cost behavior.