金融契约执行效率、企业进入与产品市场竞争

Financial Contract Enforcement,Entry and Product Market Competition

"供给侧"改革的核心之一是引导企业有序进入新行业,金融契约执行效率的高低会影响企业外部融资成本和进入决策,进而决定市场竞争程度。本文将不完全契约机制和古诺竞争引入动态一般均衡框架,从理论上阐释了金融契约执行效率对企业进入和市场竞争的影响机制。此外,本文使用1998—2007年中国制造业企业的微观数据对理论结果进行了实证检验,回归结果表明:金融契约执行效率越高的地区,企业进入激励越强、市场竞争越充分;从地区角度看,中部地区对金融契约执行效率的变动相对敏感;从行业角度看,技术密集型行业对金融契约执行效率的变动相对不敏感。

Summary： After many years of high-speed development, China＇s traditional growth mode has been challenged by environmental constraints, weak external demand and excessive production capacity. China needs to find new growth momentum through supply-side reform. One core part of supply-side reform involves guiding enterprises entering new industries. Although China has made great progress in the construction of ＂hardware＂in the business environment, there is still a lack of ＂software＂. One of the shortcomings in this regard is the inefficiency of financial contract enforcement. Inefficiency with financial contract enforcement leads to an environment of incomplete contracts. When enterprises make deals with financial institutions, the institutions may be ＂ held up＂ by the enterprises. To compensate for their potential loss, financial institutions add institutional markups to their lending rates. The markup in turn pushes up the lending rate, and the increase in the lending rate leads to arise in costs. Whether a firm enters the market depends on weighing the profits against the fixed costs incurred by this barrier. Improvement to the enforcement of financial contracts will reduce enterprise costs, and relatively cheaper inputs should boost margins, thereby encouraging enterprises to enter the market. At the same time, as more enterprises enter the market, excess profits gradually disappear and the market returns to equilibrium. However, the dynamic process reduces the concentration of the market, raising the level of competition. To demonstrate this mechanism, this paper incorporates the incomplete contract and Cournot competition into a DGE model to explain how the enforcement of financial contracts affects market entry and competition. We find that the more contracts are enforced, the more firms enter the market. Moreover, as the finance-dependent industry has a larger proportion of financing costs, when financial contracts are enforced, the industry expands faster than others. We use data from Chinese industrial enterprises between 1998 and 2007 to test some theoretical resuhs. Several results are produced. First, from a nationwide perspective, the better the enforcement of financial contracts, the more firms enter the market, and firms with stronger financing dependence are more sensitive to changes in contract enforcement. This conclusion is consistent with the theoretical results. Second, from a regional perspective, the middle area of the country benefits the most from institution building, perhaps due to the low base of enterprises in the middle area. The sample capacity of the middle region is only one fifth that of the eastern region, so having fewer enterprises can also lead to greater changes to industry entry rates and market concentration. Third, from an industrial perspective, a tech-intensive industry is less sensitive to contract enforcement than labor-intensive and capital-intensive industries. This may be due to one of the most important findings identified in this paper： enterprises that need to raise funds for their material capital investment depend on external financing and financial contract enforcement. In contrast, tech-intensive industries rely on human capital and advanced technologies rather than physical capital. This paper contributes by enriching research on the relationship between institutions and market competition. In particular, it makes use of the theory of incomplete contracts to explain how financial contract enforcement affects entry into the market and market competition through finance costs. Additionally, by incorporating the incomplete contract and Cournot competition into a DGE model as part of our qualitative analysis, we obtain corresponding quantitative results based on micro data. Although the framework can reasonably explain changes to manufacturing, entry into and competition within the service industry are not covered in this paper. We hope future research will pay more attention to how institutional factors affect the development of the service industry.