Summary:
Although China's financial market has greatly progressed, the depth and structure of the financial system still need improvement. Meanwhile, because of the increasing domestic and foreign environment uncertainty, the downward pressure on the economy, and the devastating effects of COVID-19, China's economic development is facing the triple effects of demand contraction, supply shocks, and weakening expectations. Low-constraint firms detach themselves from their main businesses and invest in financial intermediaries such as shadow banking, which provides them with environmental and conditional support to bypass formal institutions for financing, inducing a rapid increase in shadow banking. Given that the development of China's formal financial system has not reached the high-end level, regulatory arbitrage has also been an important factor prompting firms to engage in shadow banking. However, most collective investments in shadow banking are structured and securitized as risky innovative tools, and mismatch between assets and liabilities may trigger risk contagion and evolution. The Chinese government has launched successive measures to maintain the stable and healthy development of the real economy. For example, the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) recommends that “improve the financial supervision system and hold the bottom line of avoiding systemic financial risks”; moreover, the 14th Five-Year Plan passed by the Central Committee of the CPC at the fifth plenary session states that “adhere to the focus of economic development on the real economy and build a sound financial system and mechanism to effectively support the real economy.” Thus, it is critical to understand how the financial system can be improved to better support the real economy as well as establish a long-term governance mechanism of shadow banking to promote stable and sustainable economic development. This study explores a long-term governance mechanism of shadow banking from the perspective of a game between formal and informal finance. Given China's economic development practices and the mechanisms of shadow banking, this study uses banking competition to represent financial marketization and uncovers two main mechanisms, credit distortion and regulatory arbitrage, through which banking competition affects shadow banking. Credit distortion focuses on shadow banking between firms (e.g., entrusted loans) from the perspective of inter-firm differences in financing constraints, whereas regulatory arbitrage focuses on firms' shadow banking with the participation of financial institutions (e.g., entrusted wealth management). Based on the data of non-financial firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges between 2003 and 2019, this study reports that banking competition helps reduce firms' shadow banking by weakening credit distortion and regulatory arbitrage; moreover, for each unit of increase in the standard deviation in banking competition, shadow banking decreases by an average of approximately 15.88% of the sample standard deviation. This effect is more prominent in firms with high financing constraints and low investment opportunities, indicating that banking competition can provide timely assistance to govern shadow banking. Our study has important policy implications. First, the government should continue to deepen the financial system reforms and enhance the breadth and depth of the participation of financial institutions in economic development by promoting two-way financial openness. Meanwhile, we should further deepen the factor market reforms, improve financial infrastructure construction, enhance the credit allocation efficiency, reduce capital misallocations, and promote the structural adjustment functions of financial services for real economic development. Second, the government should strengthen its functional financial supervision to improve firms' information disclosure quality and reduce information asymmetry between firms and stakeholders. Moreover, policy makers should optimize the investor protection system, strengthen the scientific evaluation of firms' information disclosure quality, and improve the effectiveness of financial information disclosure to prevent firms from engaging in shadow banking. Third, policy makers also should focus on dynamic tracking and real-time monitoring of financial institutions' businesses. This will help prevent financial institutions from entering the shadow banking business for regulatory arbitrage motivation, thereby reducing the formation of excess shadow banking returns. This will also lead to the adoption of effective economic policies according to the reality of economic development, including the use of targeted policies to curb the credit flow to financialized firms, maintain optimal credit growth, improve credit quality, and optimize credit allocation structure, all of which are conducive to fundamentally curbing firms' motivation to participate in shadow banking.
司登奎, 李颖佳, 李小林. 中国银行业竞争与非金融企业影子银行化[J]. 金融研究, 2022, 506(8): 171-188.
SI Dengkui, LI Yingjia, LI Xiaolin. China's Bank Competition and Shadow Banking of Non-financial Enterprises. Journal of Financial Research, 2022, 506(8): 171-188.
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