Can a Targeted Supporting Policy Ease the Financing Constraints on Private Enterprises？ Evidence from Debt Financing Supporting Tools
XU Guang, ZHAO Qian, WANG Yuguang
PBC School of Finance, Tsinghua University; School of International Trade and Economics, Central University of Finance and Economics; School of Economics, Xiamen University
Summary:
The private economy plays an important role in China's rapid economic development. However, in recent years, private enterprises have suffered from financing difficulties, and regulatory authorities have issued a series of measures to address this problem. Among these measures, debt financing for private enterprises is a targeted support policy that aims to ease the external financing constraints on private enterprises in a market-oriented operation mode. This policy introduces derivatives such as CRMWs, which are sold at the same time as bonds are issued, allowing investors to avoid the risk of default by purchasing CRMWs. Can this targeted supporting policy successfully support private enterprises？ If so, what is the specific mechanism？ This study uses data on the interbank bond market to empirically examine the impact of the targeted supporting policy on private enterprises' bond financing. We collect 2,347 samples from the April 2018 to March 2019 period, which represent bonds from 655 private enterprises and 1,692 state-owned enterprises. The data are mainly from the Wind database. The data on the cancellation of bond issuances are obtained from the Shanghai Clearing House. First, we review the background of the policy and construct a theoretical framework. We point out that this policy has both a signal transmission effect and a CRMW insurance effect. Both effects could effectively alleviate the financing constraints on private enterprises. The signal transmission effect works for all private enterprises, whereas the CRMW insurance effect only works for private enterprises with lower ratings. Based on this finding, we then conduct an empirical analysis to determine which effect is stronger. We use the difference-in-differences (DID) method to determine whether the policy can successfully target private enterprises. In the follow-up, we further explore the CRMW insurance effect. We make the following findings. First, after the announcement of a debt financing tool for private enterprises, the price of private enterprises' bonds dropped, and it became easier for them to issue bonds successful bonds. Using a DID analysis as a robustness test, we find that the bond issuing price of private enterprises fell more than that of state-owned enterprises after the announcement of the policy, indicating that it successfully targeted private enterprises. Second, the signal transmission effect of the target supporting policy is strong, whereas the insurance effect of CRMWs is weak. This is shown by the fact the private enterprises' bonds with different ratings all showed a decrease in issuing price and an increase in the probability of successful issuance after the policy was issued. Third, the effect of CRMW on loosening the financing constraints on private enterprises has not been fully realized. Although the role of CRMW in directly reducing the issuing price of private enterprises' bonds is not obvious, this effect significantly increases the probability of successfully issuing bonds, which can indirectly reduce the comprehensive financing cost. This study offers the following insights. First, targeted supporting policies in the bond market can accurately support private enterprises. We should promote more such policies. Second, CRMW is currently more helpful for solving the issuing problem than the pricing problem. It is necessary to consider the tradeoff between high-probability issuance with high-cost financing and low-probability issuance with low-cost financing when deciding whether to use CRMW. Third, as the CRMW insurance effect has not been fully realized, more policies supporting CRMW are needed. It is necessary not only to strengthen the breadth and depth of investor education, but also to promote more supporting measures, such as capital charge. The contributions of this study are as follows. First, we discuss not only the impact of the targeted supporting policy on the bond issuing price, but also the impact of the policy on the availability of corporate bond financing based on the cancellation of bond issuances, which provides a large sample for a comprehensive review of policy effects. Second, unlike previous studies, we focus on whether the targeted supporting policy can effectively act on the object of the policy; specifically, we conduct an in-depth study of the policy's structural adjustment effect, which provides a new perspective on the policy. Third, we theoretically show that the targeted supporting policy can operate through a signal transmission effect and the insurance effect of CRMW, and then use DID and PSM, respectively, to verify each effect. This provides not only new theoretical support for understanding the policy transmission mechanism, but also a more detailed and targeted empirical basis for evaluating the role of policy.
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