Impact of carbon disclosure on debt financing costs

Creditors,such as banks,often use disclosed environmental information to assess a company’s environmental risk and ensure the safety of debt funds.Consequently,carbon disclosures have become an important consideration for creditors when making investments.This study explores the relationship between carbon disclosure and debt financing costs using data on listed companies from 2008 to 2019.The results show that carbon disclosure can reduce the debt financing costs of enterprises,and that this influence is more significant for private companies than for state-owned enterprises.Instrumental variables and Propensity Score Matching(PSM)were used to evaluate the robustness of negative relationships.Furthermore,carbon disclosure has a more significant impact on debt costs with less environmental supervision pressure,weak residents’environmental awareness,and weak product market competition.These findings provide guidance for companies’carbon information disclosure and support the establishment of official carbon disclosure standards.

State-Owned Capital Participation in Private Enterprises:A Perspective of Debt Financing

This study takes debt financing as the entry point and explores the impact of state-owned capital participation in private enterprises from the perspectives of“unarticulated rules”and“articulated rules”.The study finds that state-owned capital participation significantly reduces the debt financing costs of private enterprises and expands the scale of their debt financing.This conclusion remains valid after a series of endogeneity and robustness tests.Further analysis of the mechanism reveals that state-owned capital participation improves the debt financing of private enterprises through multiple channels:Enhancing their social reputation,mitigating the“statistical bias”they face,optimizing their information quality,and reducing the“shareholder-creditor”agency problems.This paper conceptualizes these benefits as the“complementary advantages of heterogeneous shareholders”.This not only constructs a theoretical framework for“reverse mixed-ownership reform”but also better narrates the Chinese story of“mixed-ownership reform”by adopting a more universally applicable theory of equity structure.Additionally,the paper supplements existing research on the macro-and meso-level relationship between the government and the market by exploring the government’s positive role at the micro-level.

Research on the Impact of Social Credit Improvement on the Debt Financing of Agricultural Enterprises

This study takes China’s A-shares agricultural companies as the research subjects and examines the influence of social credit environment on the debt financing of agricultural enterprises.This study has found that the improvement of social credit environment can significantly increase the debt financing scale of agricultural enterprises.After a placebo test,the replacement of explained variables,and the control of industry fixed effects,the results obtained are still significant.The mechanism test found that the scale of the enterprise has a complete intermediary effect;that is,the social credit environment can increase the scale of external financing of agricultural enterprises by increasing the scale of the enterprise.This article focuses on the impact of informal institutions on corporate debt financing,which is conducive to enriching relevant research on agricultural enterprises and has important practical significance for promoting the development of the agricultural industrial chain as well as“village revitalization.”

Can material asset reorganizations affect acquirers' debt financing costs?——Evidence from the Chinese Merger and Acquisition Market

In this paper, we investigate whether material asset reorganizations(MARs), a special form of merger and acquisition(M&A) transactions, can affect the acquirers' cost of debt financing. Further, we examine the effect of acquiring firms' accounting information quality on the cost of debt and on the association between MARs and debt costs. We predict that compared to conventional M&As, large-scale acquisitions through MARs can generate a much greater influx of assets from target firms. This raises the acquirers' asset collateral and thus reduces the cost of debt. Because the quality of accounting information is a key factor affecting the cost of debt, we suggest that it has a spillover effect on the debt-cost effect of MARs. Using M&A transactions by listed companies in the Chinese A-share market from 2008 to 2014 as our sample, we find that MARs are associated with a higher asset collateral and lower ex post cost of debt than conventional M&As. Furthermore, we show that the acquiring firms' accounting information quality has a significant negative effect on debt costs, and the negative association between MARs and the cost of debt is more pronounced when accounting information quality is higher.

Ownership Differences, Auditor Reputation, and Debt Financing： Evidence from China

This research examines whether ＂the paradox of auditor reputation＂ exists in China＇s private debt market. Two types of hypotheses are developed to explain the ＂paradox＂ in terms of ownership differences. Our findings suggest： （1） by retaining big name auditors, non-state-owned enterprises （non-SOEs） significantly reduce the cost of debt and lower financial constraints; （2） For the non-SOEs, the effect of auditor reputation on the cost of debt and financial constraints declines over time due to the accumulation of these firms＇ own reputation; （3） SOEs are more sensitive to the interest rate of bank loans than their counterparts, implying their stronger bargaining power when negotiating with potential creditors than non-SOEs due to their government connections. However, SOEs＇ government connections weaken the informational role of auditors and firm reputation on signaling debt market; and （4） Corporate governance is taken into consideration by creditors as an important indicator of solvency. Further investigation demonstrates that after controlling for firm size, operating cash flow, profitability and leverage ratio, the possibility of hiring big name auditors by the younger and median-aged group of non-SOEs is considerabls, higher than ＂elder＂ non-SOEs. Moreover, poor-performing SOEs have greater incentives to make use of their government connections in their bargaining for lower debt cost, as compared with their well-performing peers.

ROE as a performance measure in performance-vested stock option contracts in China

In this paper, we hand-collect the performance measures adopted in performance-vested stock option plans in China. We find that return on equity （ROE） is a widely used performance measure. Different from most of the other performance measures, ROE is affected by the number of shares outstanding. When executive compensation contracts are explicitly tied to ROE performance, in order to avoid the reduction in reported ROE through the issuance of additional common shares （i.e., ROE dilution）, managers have an incentive to influence ROE performance through financing decisions. We find that managers are more likely to avoid ROE dilution related to debt-versus-equity choice when their performance-vested stock option plans are explicitly tied to ROE performance and when firms have a high level of access to bank loans. However, there is no such link for firms with a low level of access to bank loans. Our study shows that the association between executive compensation design and corporate financing decisions depends on the accessibility of bank loans, demonstrating the importance of institutional factors in China. The results hold after controlling for potential endogeneity in executive compensation and corporate financing decisions. Our study contributes to both the executive compensation and corporate finance literature.