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| Market-Oriented Pricing of Loans, Corporate Financing Costs, and Credit Allocation Efficiency |
| FANG Ying, WANG Huai, GUO Ye
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| Wang Yanan Institute for Studies in Economics/School of Economics/Laboratory of Digital Finance, Xiamen University |
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Abstract In order to promote the market-oriented pricing of loans, the People's Bank of China officially launched the formation and release mechanism of Loan Prime Rate (LPR) in 2013. However, at that time, the LPR was almost determined by the benchmark interest rate, which rarely reflected the market liquidity situations. Moreover, the application of LPR was limited among commercial banks. In the context of declining market interest rate, the real economy still faced financing difficulties and high financing costs. In order to deepen interest rate marketization reforms, enhance interest rate transmission efficiency, and reduce financing costs of the real economy, the People's Bank of China introduced the Loan Prime Rate reform in August 2019. The LPR reform converted the LPR pricing benchmark to the Medium-term Lending Facility (MLF) rate, and clarified that all banks should determine loan rates based on LPR. The central bank hopes to enhance the influence of market factors in the LPR formation and improve the bank's market-oriented pricing ability of loans, with ultimate goals of alleviating the financing difficulties and lowering financing costs. However, can this LPR reform achieve the established goals of the central bank, and what impact will it have on the financing costs and credit allocation efficiency？
To explore the impact of LPR reform on real economy financing conditions, we choose A-share listed companies from 2018 to 2020 as research samples and conduct empirical analysis using financial data and macroeconomic data. The financial data of listed companies come from CSMAR Database and Wind Economic Database, and macroeconomic data come from CEIC China Economic Database. Firstly, since all bank loans are affected by the LPR reform, it is actually impossible to distinguish between the treat group and the control group, and using simple panel regression would have severe endogeneity problems. To explore the impact of LPR reform on the corporate financing costs, we construct a continuous variable that reflects the financing constraints of enterprises, then employ continuous DID method to capture the impact more accurately. Secondly, we examine the internal mechanism and further explore the heterogeneous impact of the reform on the corporate financing costs. Finally, to explore the impact of LPR reform on credit allocation efficiency, we group enterprises based on growth and empirically test whether high-growth enterprises have effectively improved their financing availability after the reform.
The results indicate that the LPR reform significantly reduces the corporate financing costs, and enterprises with lower financing constraints experience a greater decrease in financing costs after the LPR reform. Moreover, the LPR reform improves credit allocation efficiency, with high-growth enterprises experiencing increased loan accessibility at a higher loan rate. Micro-level mechanism tests confirm that the LPR reform lowers financing costs through the interest rate transmission mechanism, the competitive mechanism, and the loan pricing mechanism. Specifically, LPR reform helps to transmit the decline in monetary policy rates and market interest rates to the real economy, after the reform, enterprises are more sensitive to changes in MLF rates and LPR. At the same time, LPR reform reduces the financing costs of enterprises with lower financing constraints by enhancing competitiveness among banks. In addition, the expansion of quoting banks can help guide small and medium-sized banks to set loan prices and reduce loan rates. Finally, heterogeneity results indicate that the impact of LPR reform on corporate financing costs is mainly reflected in low-risk enterprises, strategic emerging industry enterprises, and non-state-owned enterprises.
The contributions of this paper lie in the following aspects. Firstly, this paper employs a continuous DID method based on corporate financing constraints, which more accurately explores the impact of LPR reform on corporate financing costs. Secondly, this paper analyzes and tests the impact of LPR reform on credit allocation efficiency from the perspective of information asymmetry in the credit market. Thirdly, this paper complements the research on the micro-level mechanism of the impact of LPR reform on the financing costs, and the existence of interest rate transmission mechanism, competitive mechanism, and loan pricing mechanism has been verified. Heterogeneous impacts of reform on different enterprises have also been discovered. This paper not only provides empirical evidence for the central bank to assist in market-oriented pricing of loans, but also provides direction guidance for further deepening interest rate marketization reform in the future.
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Received: 23 March 2023
Published: 02 May 2024
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