Summary:
To avoid control of credit scale and structure, China's commercial banks began to convert loans into interbank assets by nonstandard accounting operations. Over a long period of time, these interbank “quasi-loans” which are in the form of interbank assets, became an important form of Chinese-style shadow banking practices. Hence, China's regulatory authorities began to focus on strengthening the regulation of interbank arbitrage and idling funds. However, the Western experience does not have reference value because of the unique Chinese interbank arbitrage conditions. Accordingly, China is experimenting with and adjusting interbank regulations to identify culturally Chinese supervision methods. Simultaneously, interbank quasi-loans have a profound impact on the financing of small and micro enterprises (SMEs). On the one hand, informal financing practices, such as interbank quasi-loans, can complement formal financing practices. On the other hand, interbank arbitrage will crowd out SMEs' financing availability. In addition, the idling funds generated during the interbank arbitrage will also lead to a virtual economic boom that will distort the allocation of credit resources and worsen SMEs' financing environment. Therefore, using Chinese interbank regulations to regulate interbank quasi-loans efficiently is of great significance for SMEs' financing practices. To test the impact and mechanism of interbank regulations on the SMEs' financing availability and comprehensive financing costs empirically, we select SMEs that are energy intensive, highly polluting, or operating at overcapacity, in addition to real estate enterprises, as the research object. Under the limitation of data availability and quality, all the SMEs that we choose are listed companies or publicly traded on the new over-the-counter market. The financial and macro data for 2008 to 2019 are drawn from the Wind Economic Database while the monetary policy and credit data are drawn from the People's Bank of China's official website. In addition, considering the endogeneity problem, we use the systematic generalized method of moments as the empirical model. First, we introduce the different arbitrage methods used in the interbank market in China and construct an interbank idling funds index. Second, based on our theoretical analysis and research hypothesis, we examine the nonlinear impact of interbank quasi-loans on financing availability and the comprehensive financing cost for SMEs. Next, we use the mediating effect model to test and compare the heterogeneous regulation mechanism in SMEs' financing practices in addition to these enterprises that could obtain loans easily. Meanwhile, we concentrate on the role of interbank idling funds during this process. Finally, we analyze the influence of interbank capital turnover on the comprehensive financing costs for SMEs by constructing an interbank fund turnover index. We found that an U-shaped nonlinear relationship between interbank quasi-loans and SMEs' financing practices. The more developed the regional formal financial framework is, the less SMEs will depend on interbank quasi-loans. Moreover, by comparing the containment mode of interbank regulations, we find that the flow control and look-through regulations are effective in controlling interbank quasi-loans. Specifically, the structural effect of restricting interbank fund idling effectively improves SMEs' financing practices. However, restricting the scale of interbank practices must be weighed further as research shows that interbank fund turnovers have not reached an optimal level. This paper contributes to the literature in the following aspects. First, China's regulatory authorities have accumulated some interbank regulation experience in recent years, but the literature rarely discusses the effect and mechanism of interbank regulations on the real economy. Hence, this paper takes interbank regulations as the main starting point to provide suggestions for Chinese-style interbank regulations. Secondly, earlier studies usually take the interbank scale as a characteristic of interbank arbitrage and seldom focus on the role of interbank idling funds. This paper proposes a quantitative index for interbank idling funds, which aids in understanding its connotations and could inspire future research into interbank idling funds. Third, SMEs' financing difficulties cannot be separated from interbank regulation interventions. However, the literature is inconsistent considering informal financing perspectives. This paper discusses the relationship between interbank quasi-loans and SMEs' financing practices, which extends the literature on the interaction between SMEs' financing practices and informal financing practices.
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