供应链金融与企业债务期限选择

Supply Chain Finance and the Corporate Debt Maturity Selection

关于企业的债务期限选择行为,理论界一直存在不同的观点。随着供应链金融服务实体经济的重要性越来越受到重视,本文将供应链金融纳入到企业债务期限选择的理论分析框架中,以2010—2020年中国上市公司为研究对象,分析了供应链金融对企业债务期限选择的影响。实证检验发现:实施供应链金融计划的核心企业更愿意缩短债务期限,其影响路径为通过提高盈利水平和盈利稳定性降低利率风险,以及通过改善财务状况降低再融资风险;双向供应链金融和数字供应链金融对债务期限的缩短效应更强。进一步检验发现,供应链金融对债务期限的缩短效应并没有诱发企业投融资期限错配和非理性短期借款,反而降低了债务融资成本和提高了投资效率,说明我国企业缩短债务期限的行为并非全是“金融抑制”或信息不对称下的被迫选择,也可能是特定情境下企业权衡风险收益后的主动决策。本文为解释企业的“债务期限选择之谜”提供了新的视角和增量证据,为进一步释放供应链金融的实体经济效应,防范债务风险,促进经济高质量发展提供了学理支持。

Since the 2008 financial crisis,under the growth model of “debt-driven investment”,the scale of corporate debt in China has continued to rise,with increasing debt risks.Reasonable arrangement of the debt maturity of enterprises to prevent the systematic maturity mismatch of investment and financing is the basis of preventing debt risks.However,there are two different views on the choice of debt maturity in the theoretical circle:the view of information asymmetry of debt maturity and the view of trade-off of debt maturity.As a result,the rationality of corporate debt maturity selection cannot be effectively judged theoretically,and there has always been a “mystery of corporate debt maturity selection”.Although scholars try to provide a theoretical basis for explaining and extending the debt maturity of enterprises from the aspects of external institutional environment and internal corporate governance,“short debt maturity” and “maturity mismatch of investment and financing” are still common in enterprise practice.With the innovation of financial technology,supply chain finance(SCF) has been developing rapidly.By 2020,China's 4,117 banks,133 securities companies,68 trust companies,and 240 insurance companies provided a total amount of CNY 17.7 trillion in SCF.The size of the SCF market continues to increase,and the effect of serving the real economy is prominent.Based on this,will SCF affect the debt maturity of China's enterprises? On the one hand,SCF is conducive to directly reducing the information asymmetry between banks and enterprises(Tseng et al.,2019;Fan et al.,2020),and promoting the establishment of a “new bank-enterprise relationship”(Ling et al.,2021),which may increase the willingness of banks to provide long-term loans.On the other hand,SCF is also conducive to improving the profitability of enterprises(Dary and James,2019),improving the financial position,and increasing the debt repayment guarantee for banks(Pan et al.,2020),thus reducing the interest rate risk and refinancing risk.Enterprises may also take the initiative to shorten debt maturity in order to reduce capital costs and increase enterprise value.In view of this,SCF provides us with an excellent context to explore the “mystery of corporate debt maturity selection” of enterprises.Based on the data of China's A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2020,the empirical test shows that SCF can promote core enterprises to shorten debt maturity,for SCF can reduce the interest rate risk and refinancing risk of core enterprises.Two-way SCF and digital SCF are more conducive to shortening debt maturities.In addition,the shortening of the debt maturity not only does not aggravate the maturity mismatch of investment and financing and irrational short-term borrowing but also reduces the debt financing cost and improves the investment efficiency.Compared with the existing literature,the contribution of this paper is as follows.First,it provides a new perspective and incremental evidence to explain the “mystery of corporate debt maturity selection” and judge the rationality of debt maturity selection.Our research finds that the short debt maturity under the influence of SCF is not a forced choice led by creditors or irrationally influenced by managers,but a rational choice of enterprises after the risk-return trade-off,which provides new evidence for the view of trade-off of debt maturity.It also provides useful inspiration for rethinking the applicable boundaries of existing theories when explaining the “mystery of corporate debt maturity selection”.Second,this study enriches the empirical literature on the mechanism of SCF serving the real economy.Existing studies have neglected the influence of SCF on the maturity structure of corporate debt.Our research provides new empirical evidence for the mechanism of SCF serving the real economy from the perspective of debt maturity adjustment.Third,it provides a new perspective for the research of the combination of industry and finance.Existing literature mainly supports the role of the combination of industry and finance in improving the allocation efficiency of financial resources through holding shares of financial institutions or personnel participation.Our research supports the superiority of SCF,a new combination of industry and finance.