商业信用能够提高企业全要素生产率吗?——基于中国企业的融资约束视角

Can Trade Credit Increase the Firms' TFP?——A Perspective from Financial Constraints of Chinese Firms

中国货币金融体系有两大特征事实:非正规金融(或民间金融)发达和利率双轨制。这两个特征事实相互依存,对货币政策制定和实施过程产生重大冲击,使得我国货币政策运行模式明显有别于成熟的市场经济国家。非正规金融不受中国人民银行直接监控,由非正规金融体系中借贷资金供求关系决定的市场化的资金价格不同于正规金融体系中的资金价格,资金价格扭曲长期存在。为此,本文使用规模以上工业企业数据验证了商业信用是否是提高企业全要素生产率的有效金融手段这一问题。考虑了中国企业面临的融资约束和企业的异质性后,本文得出的结论是:商业信用对提高非国有企业的全要素生产率是有效的,但对提升国有企业的全要素生产率则没有显著的影响。特别地,融资约束越强,商业信用越有助于提高非国有企业的全要素生产率。商业信用通过有效地管理运营资本,平滑现金流和平滑创新投资提高企业的全要素生产率。

The financial system performs two facts in China: informal financing and double-track interest rate system. These two facts rely on each other, which shocks the monetary policy significantly. Therefore, our monetary system is different from those in other developed markets. Informal financing is not regulated by the central bank of China directly, due to the demand and supply is not up to the market price system. Therefore, this paper uses the manufacturing firm’s data to investigate whether trade credit can improve Total Factor Productivity(TFP) efficiently or not. Across the financial constraints and heterogeneities of the firms, this paper demonstrates that trade credit can increase TFP significantly, but not for the state-owned firms. Specifically, trade credit contributes more significantly to the more financially constrained firms. Furthermore, trade credit significantly increases TFP through managing working capital, adding cash flow and smoothing innovation investment.