产品市场竞争、公司违规与商业信用

Product Market Competition,Corporate Fraud and Trade Credit

通过研究公司违规被监管机构处罚这一事件对商业信用获取及其使用成本的影响,考察了企业在资本市场的声誉受损是否会传染并影响到"供应商-客户"关系。实证结果发现,公司在发生违法违规行为被监管机构处罚后,获得的商业信用额度变少,"商业信用-现金持有"敏感性提高,也即商业信用的使用成本上升。进一步地,违规被罚事件在竞争激烈的行业中对"供应商-客户"关系破坏更严重,即在产品市场竞争更加激烈的行业,公司违规被罚后商业信用减少与使用成本的提高更显著。结论表明,除了股东和债权人,供应商也会看重公司的违法违规事件,监管机构对公司违规行为的处罚并非"纸老虎",处罚的传染效应使得企业会承担因与其他合约方关系的破坏而造成的间接成本。

Punishments for corporate frauds by regulators destroy the reputation of the companies. We examine whether the punishments impair the relationship between supplier and customer by testing the effects of the punishments on the amount of trade credit and the costs of using it. We find that fraudulent listed companies tend to be associated with less trade credit and higher sensitivity of trade credit to cash,namely higher costs of using trade credit. Moreover,the negative effect of corporate frauds on the relationship between supplier and customer is more pronounced in competitive industries,leading to significantly greater reduction in trade credit and greater increase in the costs of using trade credit. Our results reveal that besides the shareholders and debt-holders,suppliers also pay attention to the punishments for company frauds,and argue that the regulators are not toothless tigers,and the punishments cause the fraudulent companies to bear the costs related to the impairment of their relationship with other stakeholders.