金融发展有助于缓解制造业企业成本黏性吗?——来自我国银行信贷发展的经验证据

Does Financial Development Reduce Cost Stickiness?Evidence from the Development of Bank Credit in China

本文以2005~2017年制造业企业成本黏性为研究对象,考察我国以银行信贷为主的金融体系发展对企业成本黏性的影响。研究发现,总体上金融发展缓解了制造业企业成本黏性,并且上述效应在民营企业中更加显著。本文用金融发展替代变量、考虑金融危机和地区金融发展差异等因素进行稳健性检验,并用2013年中国人民银行放松贷款利率管制作为外生事件克服内生性问题之后,实证结果依然存在。机制检验发现,金融发展促使企业投资有形资产与持有现金之间的独立性增强,改善企业利用抵押有形资产获取抵押贷款的行为,在优化企业资源配置的同时有利于缓解成本黏性。本文从经营风险视角探究金融发展形成的微观效应,研究结论为说明我国银行信贷金融市场深化发展对微观企业产生深刻影响提供了理论依据,为金融发展有助于经济增长提供了微观经验证据。

Cost stickiness measures the sensitivity of reduction in a firm’s suboptimal costs to changes in a firm’s production activity.We study the effect of the development of the bank-based financial system in China on a firm’s cost stickiness.Using a sample of non-financial firms listed on the Chinese stock exchanges for the period of 2005 to 2017,we find a firm’s cost stickiness is negatively associated with a measure of financial development.Due to the differential development of the banking system,the negative relation interacts with a firm’s ownership structure and geographical location and is stronger for non-state-owned enterprises.A battery of additional tests shows that the baseline results are free of sample selection bias and are robust to alternative measures of financial development.The event that the People Bank of China lifted regulation restrictions on loan interests in 2013 is used as an exogeoneous shock to deal with the endogeneity issue,and the main result continues to hold.Further analysis reveals that financial development lowers cost stickiness through reducing the dependence of a firm’s cash holdings on its tangible assets,which can be readily used as collaterals for bank loans when needed.Our results support the view that financial development in China can have a firm-level impact and thus extend the evidence on the relation between financial development and economic growth.