定向降准的微观效应——风险加速亦或质量回归?

The Micro Effect of Targeted Reduction of Reserve Ratio:Risk Accelerating or Flight to Quality?

随着我国经济发展由高速增长向高质量发展转变,传统宽松货币政策下“掀起巨浪、普托众船”的总量调控模式已不再适用。定向降准能否挑起重担,在提升经济增长质量的同时守住不发生系统性风险的底线尚未得证。本文以企业微观数据为样本,从促进企业信贷融资,提升企业信贷质量以及规避信贷风险三个层面分析定向降准的微观效应,结果表明定向降准之后农业企业的信贷融资较非农企业有显著增加。为了减少逆向选择与道德风险带来的坏账损失,商业银行会相机地将信贷资源投向高质量、低风险的农业企业,而低质量、高风险农业企业难以获得定向降准的政策红利。进一步研究发现,定向降准之后农业企业的业绩显著改善,这表明定向降准对农业企业质量提升有一定的推动作用。而定向降准的风险承担渠道并没有对农业企业与非农企业产生非对称作用,定向降准对农业企业没有产生风险加速效应。因此定向降准解决了货币政策保增长与控风险两难的理论分歧,信贷质量的回归为经济的高质量发展打下坚实的基础。

After the depression which followed the financial crisis in 2008,the science of monetary policy changed.The traditional transmission mechanism of monetary policy ceased to take effect when facing the liquidity trap.What should the monetary authority do to recover the economy?Theory offers ambiguous answers to this question and leaves the monetary authority at a crossroad.From the theory of bank lending channel,contractive monetary policy is not appropriate during the recession since it deteriorates the economy through financial accelerator mechanism.However,expansionary monetary policy would spur banks to take on excessive risk by risk-taking channel.If the risk shifts from banks to firms,especially weak firms with strong reliance on banks,it will cause great fluctuation of the real economy.Since the transformation of development methodology from high-speed growth to high-quality growth,it's not suitable to implement the aggregate regulation approach of“raising the tide and lifting all boats”under traditional loose monetary policy.To break the ice,Chinese central bank,announced to implement an innovative monetary policy named Targeted Easing with the intention of boosting the economy without triggering big fluctuations.From April 2014 to April 2020,the People's Bank of China published fifteen rounds of Targeted Easing to reduce the reserve requirement ratio(RRR)of banks who highly engaged in agro-loans or lending to small and micro enterprises.The policy was designed to boost lending skewed towards the weak areas in the economy,adjust the overall economic structure and promote the growth with minor stimulus.Since the enforcement of Targeted Easing,the effectiveness of the policy has aroused intensive debate.On the one hand,Targeted Easing injected small amount of liquidity into the targeted financial system with the purpose of improving economic structure without causing great swings in inflation rate and exchange rate.Furthermore,the cost of Targeted Easing is much lower in comparison with Quantitative Easing.On the other hand,money released from Targeted Easing does not go directly into rural areas and small businesses.The effect of the policy depends on the decision of banks.The literature on monetary policy mainly focused on the aggregate shock of conventional monetary policy to economy.A few of literature studied the credit channel of Targeted easing which aims to support weak areas of economy precisely through targeted stimulus.However,it remains an enigma whether Targeted Reduction of Reserve Ratio could undertake the burden of improving the quality of economy and preventing the outburst of systemic risk.This paper makes a novel attempt at shifting focus from the credit channel of Targeted Easing monetary policy to quality transmission channel and risk-taking channel of Targeted easing.We utilize the sample of micro data and analyze the effect of Targeted Reduction of Reserve Ratio from three aspects:stimulating credit supply,improving credit quality,and avoiding credit risk.The empirical results show that the credit financing of agricultural firms increases significantly more than nonagricultural firms after Targeted Reduction of Reserve Ratio.For reducing the loss of bad debt emerging from adverse selection and moral hazard,commercial banks will invest in high-quality or low-risk agricultural firms discretionarily,while low-quality or high-risk agricultural firms loose the policy bonus of Targeted Reduction of Reserve Ratio.After further analysis we find that the performance of agricultural firms improved evidently,which indicates the promotion of quality of agricultural firms were caused by Targeted Reduction of Reserve Ratio.The influence of Risk-taking Channel is not asymmetric between agricultural firms and nonagricultural firms,and the risk acceleration effect of Targeted Reduction of Reserve Ratio is not evident for agricultural firms.Therefore,Targeted Reduction of Reserve Ratio solves the theoretical paradox of increasing growth and controlling risk for monetary authority,and the effect of flight to credit quality provides a solid foundation for the growth of economy from the dimension of quality.