我国上市公司杠杆错估误导了银行信贷决策吗

Is the Leverage Miscalculation of Chinese Listed Companies Misleading Bank Credit Decision

由于对“资产”和“资本”概念的混淆,基于总资产计算的“名义杠杆”无法真实反映企业杠杆水平,短期财务风险指标也无法正确估计杠杆引发的风险。依托2007-2016年的A股上市公司样本,本研究发现:(1)传统意义下我国上市公司杠杆水平整体偏高的观点很大程度上是由指标错估造成的,这种错估程度在那些“交易”强势的企业(如国有企业和高市场占有率的企业)中较为严重。(2)对大部分偿债能力正常的公司来说,传统研究系统地高估了“名义杠杆”对短期财务风险指标的负面影响,且杠杆错估越严重,这种高估越明显。(3)传统研究存在的指标错估问题使银行无法依据企业的“真实杠杆”和“真实短期偿债能力”进行有效的信贷决策,在某种程度上提高了金融领域的信贷风险,降低了信贷资源配置效率。

Due to the confusion about the concepts of "assets" and "capital", the "nominal leverage" calculated in terms of total assets cannot truly reflect the level of corporate leverage, and shortterm financial risk indicators also fail to correctly estimate the risks posed by leverage. After clarifying relevant concepts, this paper systematically designs the "real leverage" indicator and the "true short-term solvency" indicator. It also measures the degree of miscalculation of leverage and short-term financial risk indicators shown in traditional research. On this basis, it employs statistics and describes the trends of miscalculation about leverage and shortterm financial risk of Chinese listed companies. The study findings: Firstly, in the traditional view, the general high leverage level of Chinese listed companies is largely due to the indicator miscalculation. This level of miscalculation is more serious in those firms that have advantages in trading, such as state-owned enterprises and firms with higher market shares. Secondly, for most companies with nominal solvency, traditional research systematically overestimates the negative impact of "nominal leverage" on short-term financial risk indicators, and the more serious the leverage miscalculation, the more obvious this overestimation. Thirdly, the miscalculation of indicators in traditional research has made it impossible for banks to make effective credit decisions based on the "real leverage" and "true short-term solvency" of enterprises, which has increased the credit risk in the financial sector to some extent and reduced the efficiency of credit resource allocation. This paper expands the horizon of credit decision efficiency research, breaks the limitation of traditional research confined to the perspective of government intervention(the lack of motivation mechanism) to explain the reasons for credit decision failure. It also proves that the defects in indicator design can also affect the effectiveness of credit decisions. It contributes to the re-examining of the relationship between physical enterprise leverage and short-term financial risk. The policy significance of this paper is to guide the financial institutions to figure out the scope of "leverage" and "risk", and to reduce the mismatch loss of credit resources that may result from the traditional indicators misestimating, and to improve the regulatory effect of macroeconomic policies, and to avoid the negative impact of excessive "deleveraging" on economic stability.