社会信用环境与企业专业化

The Social Credit Environment and Corporate Specialization

建设全国统一大市场依赖于完善的产业链分工体系,良好的社会信用环境能够通过缓解交易各方的信息不对称和降低交易成本促进专业化。本文借助2015年和2016年“中国社会信用体系建设”试点的“准自然实验”,发现社会信用环境改善能够提升企业的专业化程度,这种效应是通过促使企业分离后向业务实现的。机制分析表明,良好的社会信用环境有助于缓解信息不对称,降低市场交易成本,进而促进专业化。异质性分析发现,当企业的融资约束较强、资产专用性较低时,社会信用环境对专业化的促进作用更明显。进一步地,本文发现社会信用改善增加了企业的跨地区采购,说明社会信用环境有利于增进跨地区商贸流通。本文从信用环境的角度揭示了促进企业专业化的途径,可以为持续推进社会信用环境改善、提升企业专业化程度和构建全国统一大市场提供政策参考。

The industrial and supply chain systems formed on the basis of corporate division of labor and cooperation are fundamental features of the modern economy.Specialized division of labor not only helps to shape competitive advantages and improve production efficiency,but also strengthens technical and economic connections between upstream and downstream suppliers and enhances regional industrial collaboration.This promotes a better-quality supply system and provides a foundation for the creation of a competitive unified national market with sufficient flow of factors and coordination.The social credit environment can enhance the degree of corporate specialization through two pathways.(1)Information transparency is fundamental to establishing and maintaining trust.Constructing a credit system with a key focus on perfecting information disclosure mechanisms can reduce information asymmetry among market participants,lessen mistrust and skepticism between them,prevent opportunistic behaviors with more beneficial information,and reduce information gathering and monitoring costs for those at an informational disadvantage.This is conducive to encouraging businesses to increase their transactions with external markets,thereby enhancing specialized division of labor.(2)Market transaction costs are a critical factor affecting the degree of corporate specialization.The function of social credit is to foster mutual trust among market entities,overcome potential opportunistic tendencies between upstream and downstream suppliers through standardized enforcement and cooperative negotiation during contract signing and performance,thereby effectively reducing external transaction costs and promoting specialized division of labor.This study utilized the quasi-natural experiment of developing demonstration cities in the social credit system,a project piloted in 2015 and 2016 to examine the promoting effect of the social credit environment on specialization.It found that,following the launch of the project,enterprises in pilot cities exhibited significantly higher degrees of specialization,mainly through the separation of backward operations.Mechanism analysis showed that a good social credit environment helped alleviate information asymmetry at the enterprise level,reduce market transaction costs,and encourage enterprises to adopt specialization strategies.Heterogeneity tests showed that the impact of an improved social credit environment on corporate specialization was more pronounced in enterprises with stronger financing constraints and lower asset specificity.Further,this paper found that transactions between enterprises in pilot and non-pilot areas significantly increased,indicating that an improved social credit environment promotes inter-regional economic and trade links,and thus is beneficial for market integration.This paper offers three policy implications.(1)To promote the social credit system and boost highquality corporate development,it is necessary to perfect upper-level social credit laws,strengthen legal and institutional safeguards,and improve credit infrastructure to enhance the level of credit information collection and sharing.(2)It is also necessary to further improve property rights protection,market access,fair competition,and foundational systems like social credit,continuously optimize the business environment,prevent and resolve default risks,protect market participants'rights,reduce market transaction costs,and fully unleash the potential and advantages of corporate specialized division of labor.(3)During the process of improving the social credit environment,attention must be paid to the consistency and coordination of credit system rules across regions,tighten regulation on inappropriate market competition and market intervention behaviors,form a combined institutional force,and ensure that the social credit environment provides momentum for deepening specialized division of labor and constructing a unified national market.