企业对外担保与股价崩盘风险——基于A股上市公司的经验证据

The External Guarantees of Listed Companies and Stock Price Crash Risk——Evidence from A-share Stock Market in China

近年来,企业债务违约造成的"担保危机"接连爆发,而上市公司因对外担保所引发的股价崩盘事件也层出不穷,在此背景下,本文探讨企业对外担保与股价崩盘风险之间的内在关系,并对其作用机理进行了展开分析。研究发现,企业对外担保比重与股价崩盘风险呈显著正相关关系,且在信息透明度较低、公司治理较差和行业竞争程度较低的情况下,企业对外担保比重对股价崩盘风险的影响更为显著。进一步研究发现,企业对外担保引发股价崩盘风险提升的作用机制在于:(1)对外担保使得借款方的违约风险向担保方进行转移,加剧了担保企业的信用风险;(2)对外担保比例越高,管理层更倾向于通过信息披露采取机会主义行为——发布更加乐观的业绩预告隐藏公司的负面信息。本文拓展和深化了企业对外担保和股价崩盘风险等领域的研究,为监管部门、上市公司和投资者更深刻地理解企业对外担保的经济后果及其作用机制,提供了实证依据与重要启示。

This paper investigates the relationship and underlying mechanism between external guarantee of listed companies and the future stock price crash risk.We find that stock price crash risk is significantly and positively associated with the proportion of corporate external guarantees.By using methods such as PSM matching and selection of instrumental variables to resolve and control endogenous problems,the empirical conclusions remained robust.Further analyses reveal that the positive relationship between external guarantees and stock price crash risk is more pronounced for firms with lower information transparency,poorer corporate governance and lower level of industry competition.It shows that the internal and external governance mechanism can alleviate the agency problem of the company,and effectively improve the quality of information disclosure,which is conducive to reducing the accumulation of negative information of the company,thereby reducing the risk of stock price crash.Extensive research finds that:(1)External guarantees transfer the borrower’s default risk to the guarantor,which intensifies the credit risk of the guarantee enterprise;(2)External guarantees triggered management’s opportunistic behavior of company information disclosure.The higher the company’s external guarantee ratio,the more optimistic performance forecasts the management tends to release,deliberately hiding the company’s negative information.This paper theoretically expands and deepens the research literature in the fields of corporate external guarantees and stock market crash risks.In practice,it provides empirical evidence and important inspirations for regulators,listed companies,and investors to better understand the economic consequences and mechanisms of corporate external guarantees.