银行竞争是否影响了企业出口表现?——来自中国的证据

Does Bank Competition Affect Firm Export Performance?——Evidences from China

自改革开放以来,中国银行业竞争程度不断加剧,与此同时,中国创造了出口贸易发展的奇迹。银行竞争是否影响了中国企业的出口表现?本文从银行竞争的视角对中国企业出口扩张提供一种可能的解释。研究发现,银行竞争增加了企业出口倾向,增大了企业出口规模,提升了企业出口强度并增加了企业出口利润率,这一结论具有稳健性。影响机制分析发现,银行竞争主要是通过降低企业的融资约束和提高企业的创新水平两个路径提升了企业的出口表现。异质性检验结果显示,银行竞争对企业出口表现的影响作用在本土企业和外资企业、不同行业、不同地区之间存在一定的差异。调节效应检验结果显示,银行业景气度的提高会促进银行竞争对企业出口表现的提升作用。本文提出了适度提高银行业景气程度,适度增强资本密集型行业集聚地区的银行竞争程度和适当降低行业集中度的政策建议。

Since the reform and opening up, China’s banking system has experienced a development process from a highly monopolized market structure to a market structure with increasing competition. In the meantime, the highly expanding speed of China’s export is unique in the world which can be regarded as an export miracle. Therefore, does bank competition affect firm export performance in China? With few studies focusing on the topic of great practical significance, this paper gives a possible explanation for firms’ export expansion in China from the perspective of bank competition.Based on existing relevant research, this paper proposed three potential channels through which bank competition may affect firm export performance, that is firm financing constraints, firm innovation level, and commercial credit. Moreover,this paper calculates the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index(HHI) of the banking industry at the city level based on the detailed information from the Branch Database of Chinese Commercial Bank provided by Chinese Research Data Services Platform, and systematically explores the impact of bank competition on firm export performance based on the research sample of China Listed Company Database from 2003 to 2018.Our main finding is that bank competition has a positive impact on firm export propensity, firm export scale, firm export intensity, and firm export profit margin. Moreover, the coefficients of interest are robust to multiple robustness checks. The potential mechanism analysis finds that bank competition affects firm export performance through the channels of reducing firm financing constraints and improving firm innovation level. Furthermore, the heterogeneity test indicates that the impacts of bank competition on firm export performance are heterogeneous across local firms and foreign firms, different kinds of industries, and different regions. The moderating effect test indicates that increased banking climate degree will intensify the positive impact of bank competition on firm export performance.Based on the main findings, this paper puts forward related policy suggestions, including appropriately increasing banking climate degree, appropriately improving bank competition in regions where capital intensive industries cluster, and appropriately reducing the industry concentration ratio.