中国利率市场化改革对中小民营企业融资约束的影响研究——引入银行信贷风险定价能力作用的再考察

The Impact of Interest Rate Marketization on SMPE Financing Constraints: Reinvestigation after Introducing the Factor of Banking Credit Risk-pricing Ability

利率市场化是利率“放得开”“形得成”和“调得了”的一个改革过程。关于利率市场化对中小民营企业融资约束的影响效应,现有研究大多聚焦在利率管制的“放得开”影响层面。文章通过引入以银行信贷风险定价能力为关注点的利率“形得成”因素,在经典欧拉投资方程的框架内,利用中小民营制造业上市公司数据,基于多种实证策略,重新考察了利率市场化改革对中小民营企业融资约束的影响。研究发现,利率管制放松缓解中小民营上市企业融资约束的作用,除了现有研究关注较多的主效应外,还存在依赖银行信贷风险定价能力的调节效应,以往的相关研究显著低估了利率管制放松对中小民营上市企业融资约束的影响。文章指出,提升银行的信贷风险定价能力,是缓解中小民营企业融资约束的一个基本政策着力点。

It is undoubtedly an important topic of practical significance in contemporary China to investigate the relation between interest rate marketization reform and financial constraints of small and medium-sized private enterprises(SMPEs). For a long time, the theoretical and empirical research on the interest rate marketization and its SMPE financing effect in China is mainly based on relaxation or even abolition of interest rate controls, but the interest rate deregulation has only created a necessary rather than sufficient condition for banks to actively expand loans to SMPEs. As to whether or not the credit expansions will occur, it relates to banks’ ability to price the credit risk of SMPE loans. Therefore, in the empirical research on the nexus of interest rate marketization and SMPE financing constraints, the omission of banking credit risk-pricing ability will result in model misspecification as well as estimation bias. This paper extends the concept of interest rate marketization so that it can embody both factors of interest rate deregulation and banking credit riskpricing ability.Within the framework of investment-cash flow sensitivity which originates from the classical Euler equation, using the data of listed manufacturing SMPEs, and based on a variety of empirical strategies, this paper examines the impact of interest rate deregulation and improvement in banking credit risk-pricing ability, as well as their interactions on SMPE financing constraints. It is found that besides the linear effect, the easing effect of interest rate deregulation on financing constraints also has a nonlinear one which depends on banking credit risk-pricing ability, and when the factor of banking credit risk-pricing ability is controlled, this linear effect is stronger than when it is not controlled. The study also finds that the independent impact of improvement in banking credit risk-pricing ability is to aggravate rather than ease the financing constraints of listed SMPEs, which, however, does not mean that all the SMPE financing will be affected in the same way.The main contributions of this paper are as follows: On the basis of the relaxation or even cancellation of interest rate regulations, which is most focused on by the existing related literature, the factor of banking credit risk-pricing ability is introduced into the concept of interest rate marketization, and a corresponding proxy variable is constructed, thus breaking through the limitation that the empirical literature of China’s interest rate marketization has only focused on interest rate deregulation for a long time. And, consequently, the easing effect of interest rate deregulation on SMPE financing constraints has been estimated more accurately in this empirical research. The study has great referential value for policy-makers to take improving banking credit riskpricing ability as the basic policy choice to ease SMPE financing constraints.