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| The Digital Transformation of Banks, Information Structure, and the Substitutability between Trade Credit and Bank Credit |
| LU Yao, ZHAN Minghua
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School of Finance/Institute of Financial Openness and Development, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies;
Institute of Fortune Management Research |
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Abstract Due to the broader market scope of bank credit, from both the perspective of Arrow-Debreu economic Pareto efficiency and the financial accelerator effect, the substitution of bank credit for trade credit plays a significant role in promoting high-quality development at both the micro and macro levels. In recent years, the rapid development of digital technology has fundamentally transformed China's financial structure and operations. Existing research generally holds that fintech can effectively reduce information asymmetry, thereby mitigating financial friction. Theoretically, this should increase firms' reliance on bank credit and reduce trade credit usage. However, this view overlooks the heterogeneity of information in the bank-enterprise credit market: some information, such as credit scores, is digitizable, while other aspects, like leader ship quality, are not digitizable. While digital transformation enhances the ability to process digitizable information, it fails to address non-digitizable information asymmetry. Additionally, as digitalization progresses, banks are reducing front-line operations that handle non-digitizable information. As a result, the impact of digital transformation on the relationship between banks and trade credit becomes uncertain.
To explore this issue, we categorize credit market information into digitizable and non-digitizable types and examine how bank digital transformation influences the substitutability between trade credit and bank credit. Using an extended bank-enterprise relationship framework, this paper analyzes how digital transformation alters credit market friction and affects firms' credit choices. Based on the model analysis, we propose two hypotheses and test them using data from non-financial listed companies in China (2010-2021) with a functional-coefficient regression model. The results show that the effect of bank digital transformation on credit substitutability is nonlinear. Its impact increases as the proportion of digitizable information grows, with stronger substitution observed when downstream firms are larger and have more digitizable information. This suggests that, although bank digitalization has opposing effects on agency costs, the cost-reducing is dominant. Further analysis reveals that bank digital transformation affects credit substitutability by influencing the marginal cost of bank credit through information processing. The substitution relationship is also sensitive to economic cycles and industry types, being more pronounced during economic expansions. Significant industry differences are noticeable, with high-tech industries relying more on digitizable information, while manufacturing industries depend more on non-digitizable information, making digitalization's impact weaker in the latter.
This paper makes three potential contributions. First, it classifies bank-enterprise credit market information into digitizable and non-digitizable types, proposing a theoretical framework that reveals the dual role of bank digitalization in addressing information asymmetry caused by heterogeneous information in credit markets. Second, based on the characteristics and acquisition paths of digitizable and non-digitizable information, this paper develops an information structure index, demonstrating that bank digital transformation, rather than other mechanisms, affects the substitutability between trade credit and bank credit. Third, consistent with the theoretical model's logic, we employ a functional-coefficient regression model to empirically test the nonlinear relationship, revealing that the impact of bank digital transformation on firms' credit choices is nonlinearly related to the information structure, and confirming that the key mechanism through which digital transformation affects the relationship between trade credit and bank credit is the marginal cost of firms choosing bank credit.
In the context of rapid fintech development, this study has important policy implications for optimizing financial regulation and macroeconomic management. First, as banks' digital transformation strengthens the substitution of bank credit for commercial credit, policymakers can further support digitalization while maintaining traditional credit services to ensure more efficient resource allocation. Second, although enhanced bank credit substitution improves financial stability and mitigates risks within the banking system, it may also introduce new risks, requiring innovative regulatory approaches. Finally, considering that enterprises with different information advantages have different risk premiums when obtaining bank credit, policymakers should innovate structural monetary policy tools to encourage banks to provide differentiated credit products according to the information structure of different enterprises.
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Received: 16 November 2023
Published: 02 October 2024
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