银行竞争与僵尸企业的存续和处置

Bank Competition and Zombie Firms

虽然预防僵尸企业生成很重要,但在给定僵尸企业已经产生的现实条件下,如何缩短僵尸企业的存续时间、使之有序地复活或退出市场也同样重要。现有文献大多关注僵尸企业是“怎么来的”,而较少关注是“怎么没的”。因此,本文从银行竞争的角度切入,探讨银行对僵尸企业存续和处置的影响。本文首先提出银行竞争影响僵尸企业存续和处置的3个理论机制:第一,银行竞争的风险承担效应促进僵尸企业的存续,延长其存续时间;第二,银行竞争的筛查、监督效应促进僵尸企业复活为正常企业;第三,银行竞争能够增强正常企业的竞争力,从而挤出僵尸企业。然后,本文对这3个机制进行实证检验:银行竞争每上升一个标准差,僵尸企业存续时间缩短13.7%,复活概率下降7.41%,退出的概率增加5.239%。实证结果拒绝了风险承担机制和筛查、监督机制,符合正常企业增强机制。进一步的分析发现,银行竞争降低了正常企业的投资—现金流敏感性,提高了正常企业的销售收入和利润率,同时降低了僵尸企业的销售收入和利润率。这说明正常企业融资约束的缓解和绩效的提升,挤出了僵尸企业的销售和利润,使之退出市场。

Although it is important to prevent the formation of zombie companies, it is equally important to deal with zombie companies, resurrect or exit them in an orderly manner, given the realistic conditions that zombie companies have already produced. Most of the existing literature focuses on "how did zombie companies come", and less on "how they didn’t." Therefore, this article starts from the perspective of bank competition and discusses the bank’s influence on the survival and disposal of zombie companies. This article first proposes three theoretical mechanisms for the impact of bank competition on the survival and disposal of zombie companies: First, the risk-taking effect of bank competition promotes the survival of zombie companies and extends their duration;Second, the screening and supervision effects of bank competition promote zombie companies resurrected as normal enterprises;Third, bank competition can enhance the competitiveness of normal enterprises, thereby crowding out zombie enterprises. Then, this article conducts an empirical test on these three mechanisms:for every one standard deviation increase in bank competition, the duration of life is shortened by 13.7%, the resurrection probability of zombie companies decreases by 7.41%, and the probability of exit increases by 5.15%. The empirical results reject the risk-taking mechanism and the screening and supervision mechanism, which is in line with the normal corporate enhancement mechanism. Further analysis found that bank competition reduced the investment-cash flow sensitivity of normal companies, increased the sales revenue and profit margins of normal companies, and reduced the sales revenue and profit margins of zombie companies. This shows that the easing of normal corporate financing constraints and the improvement of performance have crowded out the sales and profits of zombie companies, making them withdraw from the market.