firm financing

  • 详情 Local Government Debt and Corporate Labor Decisions: Evidence From China
    From the perspective of corporate labor employment, we examine whether debt pressure on local governments prompts them to shift part of their social responsibilities to local firms. We conduct an analysis on Chinese local government debt (LGD) data and find that when LGD is higher, local firms are less likely to cut labor costs when their sales decrease, indicating greater labor cost stickiness. We attribute this to the responsibility-shifting effect, i.e., with heavier debt burdens, local governments intervene more in corporate labor decisions by restricting employee layoffs. Consistent with this argument, we find that the effect of LGD on labor cost stickiness is more pronounced for state-owned and politically connected firms; in regions with lower marketization levels and government fiscal self-sufficient capacities; and when regional unemployment rates, macroeconomic uncertainty, and political risk are higher. We show that through responsibilityshiftingamid high LGD, local governments benefit from a reduction in social expenditures. However, firms with stickier current labor costs will have lower subsequent productivity and market value, despite local governments reciprocating with more subsidies. Overall, LGD not only adversely impacts firm financing through the crowding-out effect but also erodes firm value through the responsibility-shifting effect.
  • 详情 Chinese government venture capital and firms’ financing:does certification help
    This paper examines the ‘certification’ of government venture capital (GVC) programs, disputes whether the Chinese government venture capital (CGVC) can promote target firms’financing through the ‘certification’ on target firms, and how the ‘certification’ work. Using a dataset of 87865 Chinese listed firms over 2008–2018, we confirmed that CGVC’s investment promotes target firms’ equity financing but inhibits corporate debt financing through the certification effect and CGVC’s reputation. Moreover, the high reputation of GVC and high market awareness could strength the ‘certification effect.’Simultaneously, the ‘certification effect’is only effective for early and late-stage firms and private-owned firms, and invalid for mature stage and state-owned firms.
  • 详情 Legal System, Financial Development, and Industry Clusters
    Using Chinese data, we offer new evidence on industry clusters as a mechanism that may promote relational contracting and facilitate inter-firm financing when legal and financial systems are weak. In particular, we find that industry clusters lower firms’ dependence on courts and bank loans, and financing costs, and in turn improve firms’ profitability. While firms’ propensity of joining clusters increases with less efficient courts and less developed financial markets, industry clusters cannot completely mitigate the negative impact of deteriorated institutions. The impacts of industry clusters are significant even after controlling for the existence of other substitutive mechanisms such as business associations.