Shell Resources of Listed Firms, Crowding-out Effects, and Bank Loan Costs for SMEs: A Quasi-natural Experiment Based on the “Ban on Backdoor Listings on ChiNex”
PAN Hongbo, ZHOU Ying, SHI Yuxin
School of Economics and Management, Wuhan University; School of Business, Xiangtan University
Summary:
The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China emphasizes that “high-quality development is the top task of building China into a modern socialist country in all respects.” As a vital force in advancing Chinese modernization, the private economy serves as a crucial foundation for achieving high-quality development in China. However, financing difficulties for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) remain a persistent challenge to China's economic growth. Currently, debt financing, predominantly through bank loans, constitutes the primary funding channel for Chinese enterprises. Yet, SMEs account for less than 30% of the total outstanding bank loans, and their financing costs are significantly higher than the average level. Therefore, alleviating the financing constraints of SMEs is a critical measure for promoting high-quality economic development, carrying profound strategic significance and practical value. Extensive research has been conducted on the factors influencing SMEs financing. However, these studies have largely overlooked the impact of listed firms' “shell” resources on SMEs bank loans based on the capital market in China. In China's capital market, listed firms' shell resources hold substantial value, leading to a preferential allocation of limited local credit resources to listed companies. This, in turn, creates a crowding-out effect on bank loans for non-listed firms, ultimately exacerbating SMEs' financing difficulties and resulting in high costs. Building on prior research, this study further examines whether the value of listed firms' shell resources affects the allocation of bank credit, thereby contributing incrementally to the existing literature. On November 30, 2013, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) issued the “Notice on Strictly Implementing the Standards for Initial Public Offerings in Backdoor Listing Reviews”, prohibiting backdoor listings on the ChiNext board, which consequently eliminated the shell value of ChiNext-listed firms. Leveraging this exogenous policy shock, this paper employs a difference-in-differences (DID) approach, using firms listed on the National Equities Exchange and Quotations (NEEQ) from 2009 to 2018 as the treatment group and ChiNext-listed firms as the control group, to examine the impact of listed firms' shell resources on SMEs bank loan costs. The empirical findings reveal that: (1) After the loss of shell value among ChiNext-listed firms, the bank loan costs for local NEEQ firms decrease significantly. (2) Mechanism analysis indicates that the depletion of shell resources among ChiNext-listed firms significantly improves loan accessibility for local NEEQ firms and alleviates their financing constraints. (3) Heterogeneity analysis shows that these effects are more pronounced in regions where ChiNext-listed firms have greater access to credit resources and among firms with higher risk and weaker corporate governance. The contributions of this study are threefold: First, it innovatively examines the determinants of SMEs financing difficulties and high costs from the perspective of listed firms' shell resources. Second, it extends the research on the economic consequences of shell resources by focusing on bank loan costs. Third, it deepens the understanding of the factors influencing corporate financing constraints through the lens of shell resources. Given the adverse effects of shell resources on SMEs financing, this study proposes the following policy recommendations to alleviate financing difficulties and promote high-quality economic development: (1) Further advance the IPO registration-based reform and improve the delisting mechanism to reduce the value of shell resources, thereby mitigating their crowding-out effect on SMEs bank loans. (2) During the transitional period before the full implementation of registration-based reforms and a mature delisting system, strengthen targeted support policies for SMEss to counteract the negative impact of shell resources. (3) Develop patent technology markets and high-standard technology trading platforms to integrate technological and financial innovation, alleviating financing challenges for high-tech SMEs. (4) Enhance the construction of SMEs credit databases to dynamically monitor policy effects and provide data support for future reforms and research. Future research could extend this study in several directions: First, as the ban on backdoor listings on the ChiNext board was lifted in 2019, and the board transitioned from an approval-based to a registration-based IPO system, subsequent studies could track the long-term evolution of shell resource value and its impact on SMEs financing, as well as the role of market self-regulation under full registration-based reforms. Second, while this study proposes policy measures such as deepening capital market reforms and enhancing SMEs support, the actual effectiveness and feasibility of these policies require further empirical validation. Future research could evaluate the implementation effects of relevant policies to provide evidence-based insights for policy optimization.
潘红波, 周颖, 石宇欣. 上市公司壳资源、挤出效应与中小企业银行贷款成本——基于“不允许在创业板借壳上市”的准自然实验[J]. 金融研究, 2025, 538(4): 114-130.
PAN Hongbo, ZHOU Ying, SHI Yuxin. Shell Resources of Listed Firms, Crowding-out Effects, and Bank Loan Costs for SMEs: A Quasi-natural Experiment Based on the “Ban on Backdoor Listings on ChiNex”. Journal of Financial Research, 2025, 538(4): 114-130.
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