所有权性质、商业信用与信贷资源配置效率

商业信用的再分配理论认为,易于获得银行信用的企业会将这些信用以商业信用的形式再分配给难以获得银行信用的下游企业。本文以2004～2007年中国工业企业数据库为样本,检验国有企业和私有企业的信用再分配功能,结果发现,尽管国有企业获得的银行信用显著多于私有企业,但提供的商业信用净额却显著少于私有企业。而且,国有企业获得的银行信用与提供的商业信用不相关,而私有企业获得的银行信用与提供的商业信用显著正相关。这些结果说明,国有企业获得更多的银行信用但并没有发挥信用再分配功能,而私有企业尽管只获得少量的银行信用却较好地发挥了信用再分配功能。这些结果意味着,如果银行体系适当增加对私有企业的信用配置,同时减少对国有企业的信用配置,可以充分发挥私有企业的信用再分配功能,提高银行体系的资源配置效率。     

信贷融资对异质性企业出口参与的影响* ——基于商业信贷和银行信贷角度的理论和实证分析

本文在新新贸易理论框架下，基于商业信贷和银行信贷的综合视角，系统研究了信贷融资对异质性企业出口参与的影响。本文重点围绕商业信贷对银行信贷的促进作用展开分析，从企业层面为中国出口增长“奇迹”提供来自金融视角的证据。本文在异质企业出口模型中引入商业信贷和银行信贷，论证商业信贷和银行信贷通过缓解出口成本融资约束影响企业出口参与，并运用中国制造业企业和IVprobit估计方法进行实证检验。本文发现：（1）改善商业信贷和银行信贷融资状况会提高企业出口概率；（2）商业信贷对银行信贷的促进作用有利于企业参与出口；（3）商业信贷对企业出口参与的作用不受企业所有制、企业规模、行业竞争性和企业出口固定成本差异的影响，银行信贷的作用则受上述差异的影响，商业信贷对银行信贷的促进作用受企业所有制和企业规模差异的影响。因此，发展信贷融资、建立商业信贷和银行信贷的互融互通机制，是加快中国出口增长的重要举措。     

浅析应收账款管理问题及对策

应收账款是激烈的市场竞争环境下因赊销和收款与销售有时间差而产生的付款方式。企业加强应收账款管理,可以降低呆账坏账风险,提高流动资金的使用效率和周转率,使企业获得稳定持续的发展。因此,主要从财务管理和企业持续发展管理的角度分析应收账款问题的赊购方原因,并针对这些原因追溯赊销方各部门应尽的职责,从而给出解决应收账款管理问题的对策。     

融资约束与企业出口行为:基于工业企业数据的经验研究

采用2000—2007年的3万多家工业企业数据,本文构造了包括内源融资、商业信贷以及企业信用特征等变量的企业融资约束综合指标。基于Heckman选择模型的经验研究表明,企业融资状况的改善不仅能提高企业出口的概率,而且对其出口规模也有重要影响。研究还发现融资状况改善对外资企业出口影响最显著;与国有企业相比,民营企业虽受到更严重的融资约束,但其出口表现并未更差。此外,融资状况改善对那些高外源融资依赖度行业的企业出口具有更明显的促进作用。     

商业信用能否成为企业有效的融资渠道——基于投资视角的分析

本文使用中国工业企业数据验证了企业获得的商业信用能否成为企业有效的融资渠道这一问题。在考虑了中国信贷市场存在的信贷歧视等问题后,结果显示,中国企业能够利用商业信用作为融资渠道,而且,对于小企业,私营企业以及外部金融环境较差的企业,商业信用对其融资帮助更大。当正规部门融资成本上升时,国有及外资企业以及外部金融环境良好的企业能够更为有效地使用商业信用作为融资渠道。     

舌金融危机时期中国中小型出口企业发展对策研究——以青岛为例

近几年来,中国中小型出口企业无论在规模还是实力上,都得到了快速发展。在后金融危机时期,中小型出口企业仍然面临订单减少、生产规模萎缩,贸易摩擦频繁、应收账款风险加大,原材料价格上涨、用工成本增加,人民币升值,银行信贷紧缩,融资更加困难,基础管理水平低、创新能力较差等问题。基于此,本文主要从政府、金融机构及中小型出口企业的角度,探讨各自应采取的措施。     

The impact of China's millennium labour restructuring program on firm performance and employee earnings1

Around the turn of the century, China experienced perhaps the largest labour restructuring program in the world. This paper uses a new dataset of Chinese industrial enterprises to examine what leads to downsizing, and tries to understand the effects of labour downsizing on firms’ technical efficiency, financial performance and employee wages. We find that downsizing is more prevalent in state‐owned enterprises (SOEs), and is more likely when enterprises are older, larger and have higher excess capacity. For both SOEs and private firms, downsizing is more likely when the prices of their products drop, but private firms respond more dramatically. Moreover, downsizing has serious short‐term costs in terms of total factor productivity (TFP). For mild downsizing, private firms suffer more deterioration in productivity. The distribution of surplus after downsizing is more favourable to labour in SOEs. For severe downsizing, both SOEs and private firms exhibit lower TFP growth with similar magnitudes. Our findings imply that private firms emphasize profit goals, while SOEs place a greater weight on labour protection.     

Bank loans vs. trade credit

Using a World Bank dataset of Chinese firms, we investigate the relative importance of bank loans and trade credit in promoting firm performance. To deal with possible endogeneity issues, we employ distinct and separable instrumental variables for bank loans and trade credit. We find that access to bank loans is central to improving firm performance and growth, while the availability of trade credit is much less important. Our results suggest that trade credit cannot effectively substitute for bank loans. Overall, our findings suggest the need for further development of China's formal financial institutions, which would enable the non‐state sector to grow much faster than it has grown in recent decades.     

Local Government Debt and Firm Leverage: Evidence from China

China's local government debt financing has been expanded aggressively to support infrastructure investment, especially since the enactment of four‐trillion‐yuan stimulus plan to stimulate the economy post global financial crisis. At the same time, the rapid increase of firm‐level leverage ratio of state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) and the decline of leverage ratio of non‐SOEs jointly deteriorated China's credit misallocation problem. In this study, we empirically test the effect of local government debton firm leverage in China. We find that an expansion of local government debt significantly crowded out the leverage of non‐SOEs, while crowded in that of SOEs. Moreover, the effect differed across industries and sectors.     

Monetary Transmission and Inventory: Evidence from Japanese Balance-Sheet Data by Firm Size

I analyse the response of inventories and short-term debts to monetary policy using disaggregated data on Japanese manufacturing firms classified by firm size. I find that monetary contraction decreases the inventories of large firms; however, inventories of small and medium firms increase considerably for the first several quarters. This implies that in a subcontracting system small and medium subcontractors serve as a buffer and alleviate the monetary shocks felt by their large parent firms. Moreover, inventory build-ups are financed by increases in accounts payable. I also find that for small firms land asset is important in easing credit conditions and increasing inventories.
JEL Classification Numbers: E22, E32, E44, E51.     

产能治理与企业债务结构再平衡—基于商业信用与银行信贷关系视角

我国上市制造业企业的商业信用与银行信贷关系存在长期互补特征,但信号理论对互补强度的演变过程缺乏有效的解释力.为探索信号理论之外的互补机制,反思企业债务结构的信贷偏移效应,文章提出了产能驱动假说,利用面板门限模型,得到了以下结论:(1)商业信用与银行信贷会随产能增长而呈现从"替代"到"互补"的演变特征,且互补强度(单位商业信用上升伴随的信贷上升)会随产能膨胀出现从"弱"到"强"的二次突变特征,即产能扭曲会使企业债务结构快速向银行信贷偏移,这为理解企业信贷依赖的形成路径提供了产能层面的微观解释.(2)企业债务结构再平衡能力具有异质性,高研发投资及低调整成本企业借助产能治理来修正信贷依赖的能力更强,因此降低调整成本、扶植企业创新应成为优化融资结构的重要政策路径.文章在信号理论之外提出了产能驱动假说,解释了我国企业债务结构扭曲的动态特征,并从技术创新与调整成本视角为推动企业实现债务结构再平衡提供了政策参考.     

Financial structure and diversification of European firms

Small and medium enterprises have been shown to rely mainly on banks for funding and, unlike larger firms, rarely have direct access to capital markets. This article looks at the extent to which SMEs avail of a wider range of funding options and how their use differs across firms and countries. Across all countries, we find that firms are currently using two or three sources of finance to fund their operations and have had previous experience of other types of funding. There are some noticeable differences across countries with peripheral economies generally being less diversified. Differences across firm size and age groups are more marked than cross-country variation, with smaller and younger firms significantly more reliant on a limited set of finance types and older, larger firms having more diversified financial structures. Looking at individual sources of financing, we find that trade credit and informal sources of finance are extremely prevalent across all countries, with Irish firms being particularly likely to use them as sources of funding.     

Why does China protect its labour‐intensive industries more?*

China's tariff structure favours labour‐intensive sectors, and this is at odds with traditional theory of comparative advantage. The paper argues that tariffs in China are a mechanism for protecting technology‐backward domestic – especially state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) from competition technology‐advanced foreign enterprises producing in China. With relatively integrated labour markets and cross‐firm technology differences, SOEs’ subsistence is supported by subsidized credit and limited access of foreign firms’ local production to tariff‐protected domestic markets. Labour market integration and capital subsidies increase the relative cost of labour in SOEs compared to their foreign competitors, hurting more domestic firms in industries that use labour more intensively. Restrictions to FIEs’ (foreign‐invested enterprises) access to tariff‐protected product markets, which protect more labour‐intensive industries, compensate for the greater cost disadvantage of SOEs in labour‐intensive sectors.     

Does a firm’s supplier concentration affect its cash holding?

High supplier concentration (SC) of a firm can weaken the firm’s bargaining power, which reduces its profitability and internal funds. Also, high SC likely increases the firm’s exposure to supply shocks, which results in high costs of external financing. Consequently, high-SC firms will incline to hold more cash due to the precautionary concern. However, there is little research into the effect of SC on cash holdings. This paper investigates how SC affects cash holdings with Chinese firms over 2009–2016. We find that a firm’s cash holding increases with its SC. Further investigations show that this positive relation stems from the unfavorable impact of SC on trade credit and equity financing. Our results are robust to different tests including the instrumental variable approach and the propensity score matching. Our findings are new to the literature and help to explain the cash holding puzzle. Our study also indicates that choosing supplier concentration adequately is important in maintaining a firm’s financial health.     

中国的金融发展、所有制结构调整与经济增长

本文利用中国分省面板数据证明:银行虽然将大部分资金贷给了国有企业,但是通过所有制结构调整,主要包括合法的国有企业改制,和不合法的国有资产流失等形式的资金漏损,使得银行信贷资产从国有企业手中转移到民营企业手中,提高了信贷资金的使用效率和资本边际生产率,促进了经济增长."拨改贷"使得银行贷款成为国有企业的主要外部资金来源,银行贷款的偿还压力推动了国有企业的改制,而政府出于保护银行信贷资产安全的需要也会催促国有企业加快改制.本文的结论为财政、外汇资金补充银行资本金和国有银行体制改革提供了理论和经验支持,为转轨国家的经济改革次序提供了启示.     

Determinants of corporate default risk in China: The role of financial constraints

Corporate default risk can affect financial stability and the macroeconomy. However, the determinants of corporate default risk in China are not well defined in the literature. We address this issue by using a rich credit event dataset of 981 Chinese listed firms over the period 1998–2013 and study the factors that affect default risk. We demonstrate that leverage, liquidity, firm size are the key firm-specific factors in determining default risk in China, along with macroeconomic factors like interest rate and stock return. Moreover, ‘Too big to fail’ only applies to non-SOEs, as default risk of SOEs is not affected by the firm size. We further find that high liquidity fails to reduce firms default risk, because small-sized firms which are financially constrained have limited cash to prevent financial distress, whereas large firms with greater cash holdings are able to mitigate their default risk as they are unconstrained.     

Financing R&D in Chinese private firms: Business associations or political connection?

Using a new and unique dataset of Chinese private firms, this paper explores how private firms access bank loans to finance innovative activities. The results reveal that political connection, rather than membership in a government-controlled business association, largely determines private firms' innovations by providing access to bank loans. Furthermore, the “grease-the-wheels” mechanism of political connection is stronger if the firms are more constrained financially, located in regions with low levels of financial development, or located in regions with relatively under-developed institutional environments. Finally, cash flow, used to measure internal financing, and trade credit, used to measure informal financing, are important alternative financing channels and support firms' R&D investments. Our paper implies that China's government needs to continue fostering a good financing environment and supporting innovation activities.     

Chinese firm and industry reactions to antidumping initiations and measures

China has been the subject of large numbers of both antidumping initiations and measures. This article explores the reactions of Chinese firms and industries to these actions by using dynamic system GMM estimator and industrial panel data on all Chinese firms in the industry, foreign firms operating within China and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) for aggregated firms group between 1997 and 2007. We find that antidumping actions by developed and developing countries negatively impact industrial profits and employee and firm numbers and also exports, but improve labour productivity. We also find that different kinds of firms show different responses. All firms together in an industry react to antidumping the most, and foreign and SOE firms show a much smaller response. Further, antidumping effects from different countries are different. Developed countries’ antidumping actions have more negative impact than developing countries’ actions; the effects of US actions are different from the European Union’s.     

DISCOUNTS FOR CASH IN RETAIL GASOLINE MARKETING

Before introducing cash discounting in retail gasoline markets, major oil companies offered proprietary credit cards as an unpriced service to their customers. This paper analyzes the origins of cash discounting in order to determine why oil companies introduced explicit pricing of the credit service in 1982 only to begin discouraging it by the end of the decade. Sharp increases in nominal interest rates and in the real price of gasoline between 1978–1982 spurred a rapid rise in the cost of financing accounts receivable. This increasing cost in part drove the initial decision to discount. By 1990 the discounting trend reversed as the costs of processing credit transactions and of the float associated with non-revolving accounts receivable fell.
Using station data from Delaware in 1983 and Washington in 1989, the paper also provides two separate estimations of the subsidy to credit buyers by cash buyers.     

THE RESPONSE OF STATE‐OWNED ENTERPRISES TO IMPORT COMPETITION: EVIDENCE FROM CHINESE MANUFACTURING FIRMS

We examine the wage and employment impact on Chinese firms of an increase in import competition associated with China's WTO accession in December 2001, with an emphasis on state‐owned enterprises (SOEs). We find that both wage and employment are negatively impacted by an increase in import competition, but firms with high state ownership cut employment less and reduce wages more than their private counterparts, suggesting that they prioritize the protection of employment over that of wages. This finding supports the notion that SOEs may have ‘multitask’ responsibilities in terms of protecting employment as well as achieving efficiency. We also find that firms with higher capital intensity reduce their wages less but cut employment more in response to intensified import competition. This provides empirical support for the efficiency wage theory.