续贷限制与企业技术创新

Rollover Restrictions and Corporate Innovation

本文以2007年的银行续贷政策改革作为“准自然实验”,采用双重差分模型探讨了续贷限制对企业技术创新的影响。研究发现,续贷限制显著抑制了企业的技术创新,且经过一系列稳健性检验后,该结论依然成立。进一步研究发现,该政策的作用效果因专利类型的不同而存在较大差异,具体表现为,在续贷限制之后,相较于低质量非发明专利,企业高质量发明专利下降幅度更大,进而企业创新质量降低。作用机制检验发现,续贷限制会降低企业信贷规模、缩短企业信贷期限以及增加企业融资成本,进而抑制企业技术创新。上述结果表明,“一刀切”式地收紧续贷标准会强化企业的融资约束,限制信贷资金对企业技术创新的支持作用,最终不利于企业的转型升级。本文研究为当前的续贷政策提供了来自企业创新视角的理论依据和实践参考。

Innovation allows firms to increase their value and cultivate new competitive advantages. In the Chinese financial system, banks are important institutions that provide firms with high-quality credit and services. They are responsible for supporting and sustaining a firm’s transformation. However, due to financial repression, Chinese firms have begun rolling over loans to support long-term innovation. Studies have suggested that the use of short-term loans to support long-term investment has become a sub-optimal choice. However, in recent years, many Chinese firms have faced liquidity risks because banks have begun to refuse to rollover loans or to demand early repayment. Few studies have explored whether loan withdrawal or loan suspension affects a firm’s innovation. Therefore, this paper explores the impact of loan rollover restrictions on the firm’s innovation.Loan rollover restrictions generally reduce the firm’s access to short-term bank loans. At the same time, loan rollover restrictions increase banks’ caution and sensitivity to risks, and the banks issue less long-term loans to avert risk. Therefore, loan rollover restrictions may inhibit the firm’s innovation. This increase in caution causes banks to strengthen the firm’s debt restraints, improving corporate governance. Thus, loan rollover restrictions resolve the agency problem in the firm’s innovation process and improve the efficiency of capital allocation, which is conducive to innovation.China passed the Guideline for Loan Risk Classification law in 2007, prohibiting the practice of "borrowing for repaying." The law stipulates that when a firm borrows a new loan to repay the due loan, the new loan is classified as a bank’s non-performing loan. The exogenous event provided this study with a good quasi-natural environment to research the impact of loan rollover restrictions on a firm’s innovation. This study uses the difference-in-differences method to conduct its research. The regression results showed that loan rollover restrictions significantly inhibit a firm’s innovation. The conclusion was still valid after a series of robustness tests. Further research found that the policy’s effects vary greatly depending on the type of patent. Firms’ invention patents were declined more often than non-invention patents.This paper’s main contributions are as follows: First, it advances the research on the economic consequences of loan rollover policy reform. Studies have not conducted detailed research on the policy reform’s impact on the firm’s innovation. This paper examines the impact of loan rollover restrictions on the innovation process, revealing the microeconomic consequences of loan rollover policy reform. Second, this paper advances the literature on corporate innovation. In recent years, studies have suggested that increased tolerance for corporate failures allows firms to be more innovative. This study adopts the bank’s perspective to show that corporate innovation can only be improved by increasing the tolerance for corporate failures and non-performing loans and relaxing the loan rollover restrictions for high-performing companies. This finding is an extension of the initial hypothesis. Third, the study has important significance for financial system reform that could improve firms overall. This paper shows that loan rollover restrictions weaken the bank credit’s positive effect on the firm’s innovation. Therefore, the relevant departments need to broaden corporate financing channels and relax loan rollover restrictions for high-performing enterprises to avert the restriction’s negative consequences and support the firm’s innovation process.