Purpose – This paper takes the Shanghai-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect as a quasi-natural experimentand investigates the impact of capital market liberalization on the corporate debt maturity structure. It also aimsto provide some policy implications for corporate debt financing and further liberalization of the capital marketin China. Design/methodology/approach – Employing the exogenous event of Shanghai-Shenzhen-Hong Kong StockConnect and using the data of Chinese A-share firms from 2010 to 2020, this study constructs a difference-in-differences model to examine the relationship between capital market liberalization and corporate debt maturitystructure. To validate the results, this study performed several robustness tests, including the parallel test, theplacebo test, the Heckman two-stage regression and the propensity score matching. Findings – This paper finds that capital market liberalization has significantly increased the proportion of long-term debt of target firms. Further analyses suggest that the impact of capital market liberalization on thedebt maturity structure is more pronounced for firms with lower management ownership and non-Big 4 audit.Channel tests show that capital market liberalization improves firms’ information environment and curbsself-interested management behavior. Originality/value – This research provides empirical evidence for the consequences of capital marketliberalization and enriches the literature on the determinants of corporate debt maturity structure. Further thisstudy makes a reference for regulators and financial institutions to improve corporate financing through thegovernance role of capital market liberalization.

Using data from Chinese A-share listed companies for the period 2007–2022,we investigates the impact of financialization on the long-term use of short-term debt (LUSD). Our findings reveal that increased financialization leads to a stronger issue of LUSD. Financialization squeezes long-term investments and equity financing levels of firms, thereby leading to LUSD. Moreover, the rise in financing costs and the degree of financing constraints intensify the effects of financialization on LUSD. The smaller the scale of the enterprise, the shorter its operating period, the higher its operational risk, the greater the promoting effect of financialization on LUSD.

This study explores the relationship between board chairs' early-life experience in the Great Chinese Famine and the debt maturity choices made by Chinese listed firms between 2000 and 2017. Our findings indicate that board chairs with famine experience exhibit a propensity towards long-term debt usage. We argue that this finding can be attributed to a risk-averse rather than altruistic orientation among board chairs who have experienced famine. Our results are particularly salient for firms with lower asset redeployability, higher distress risk, no political affiliations, and those that are not stateowned enterprises. Furthermore, this study provides three analyses to support the risk aversion traits: (1) board chairs with disaster experience underestimate their company's profit potential, (2) board chairs located in areas with higher mortality rates exhibit more obvious risk aversion behavior, and (3) extending the debt maturity date, board chairs can effectively increase company investment and mitigate the underinvestment problem.

Numerous studies have focused on the theoretical and empirical aspects of corporate capital structure since the 1960s. As a new branch of capital structure, however, debt maturity structure has not yet received as much attention as the debt-equity choice. We use the existing theories of corporate debt maturity to investigate the potential determinants of debt maturity of the Chinese listed firms. In addition to the traditional estimation methods, the system-GMM technique is used to explicitly control for the endogeneity problem. We find that the size of the firm, asset maturity and liquidity have significant effects in extending the maturity of debt employed by Chinese companies. The amount of collateralized assets and growth opportunities also tend to be important. However, proxies for a firm’s quality and effective tax rate apparently report mixed or unexpected results. Debt market and equity market conditions are also examined in relation to corporate loan maturity. The system-GMM results show that market factors seem to influence debt maturity decisions. Finally, corporate equity ownership structure has also been found to have some impact on debt maturity mix.