官员企业经历能降低公司债务融资成本吗?

Can Corporate Experience of Officials Reduce the Cost of Corporate Debt Financing?

政府官员具备何种特质能够促进政府在破解企业融资难、融资贵问题上发挥有为作用,是一个值得探讨的议题。本文研究地方政府官员企业工作经历对公司债务融资成本的影响。首先,本文基于2008—2020年地级市政府工作报告,利用机器学习与文本分析的方法,验证了地方官员的企业工作经历能够提高官员对企业债务融资问题的认知与应对能力,在政府工作报告中会更加强调企业债务融资问题,并且积极提出更多实际举措。接着,通过实证检验发现,官员企业经历显著降低了官员主政辖区内公司债务融资成本,并且当官员企业经历类型为管理层经历时更为显著。进一步机制分析表明,企业经历使得官员能够准确识别规模较小、融资约束程度较高、缺乏银企联系的企业所处债务融资困境,并通过增加地区信贷投放量、优化地区商业信用环境与加强地区金融数字化建设来有效降低企业债务融资成本。本文从工作经历角度探究官员对辖区内企业债务融资成本的影响,拓展了此前探讨官员经历特征的经济影响相关文献,也为精准选拔与培养各类政府官员提供了新的思路。

What characteristic is more conducive for government officials to act effectively on the problems of difficult and expensive financing,which have long constrained China's development? The government is effective because its officials are effective.This paper studies the impact of local government officials' work experience in enterprises on the cost of corporate debt financing.Based on the samples from 2008 to 2020,the paper uses machine learning to analyze the text of local government work reports.The empirical tests find that:When local officials have work experience in firms,the government work report pays more attention to corporate debt financing issues and has a stronger ability to solve them,which significantly reduces the cost of corporate debt financing in the official's jurisdiction,and is more significant when the type of enterprise experience is management experience.Further mechanism analysis shows that officials with working experience in enterprises can accurately identify the corporate debt financing difficulties with small scale,high degree of financing constraints,and lack of bank-enterprise contact.Moreover,it can facilitate the government effectively reducing the cost of corporate debt financing by increasing the amount of regional credit,optimizing the commercial credit environment,and strengthening the construction of financial digitalization.The high cost of debt financing is a difficult problem in the process of company development,and how to break this dilemma is an important practical problem to be solved in the process of China's economic development.Based on the theoretical entry point of effective government,this paper follows the logical analysis framework of ‘enterprise experience-officials' cognition and ability-officials' behavior-enterprise debt financing cost',exploring the impact of local officials' corporate experience on the debt market.The cognitive and behavioral habits formed by government officials in the early stages of their careers are environmentally sensitive and will be reflected in their behavioral decisions later in their political careers,which in turn will influence government initiatives and functions.The impact of corporate experience on officials will be highlighted in local government work reports in terms of their perceptions of corporate debt financing problems and their ability to solve corporate debt financing dilemmas,i.e.,both cognitive and behavioral dimensions.Further,with both deeper individual knowledge and stronger individual ability,officials with corporate experience can effectively alleviate corporate financing problems and reduce corporate debt financing costs compared with officials who have not worked in corporations.Overall,the findings suggest that according to imprinting theory,corporate experience makes officials be effective in solving corporate debt financing problems and helping overcome debt market difficulties.Possible contributions include:First,this paper uses machine learning to process the textual information of government work reports.The findings of the study support the theoretical expectation that proactive government can enhance market effectiveness and provide new empirical evidence to validate the theory of effective government.Secondly,this paper systematically investigates the impact of local officials' characteristics on the financing cost of enterprises from the micro perspective and the underlying mechanisms based on the theory of effective government,which helps to deepen the understanding of officials' influence on the micro economy.The paper also breaks the limitation of the previous literature which is limited to studying the impact of officials' characteristics on financing policies.Third,the findings of this paper provide evidence to further optimize the criteria for selecting and training officials at this stage.The selection of a certain proportion of officials who have worked in enterprises in the government sector is conducive to promoting the government's proactive approach to alleviate the difficulties of enterprises from the perspective of enterprises,which can promote the combination of effective government and effective market and help achieve high-quality economic development.It also provides a realistic reference for the optimization of relevant policies and systems.