Abstract:
China faces persistent issues of insufficient aggregate supply of long-term debt capital and limited long-term debt financing capacity for enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises. Clarifying whether stock markets can perform information transmission functions and enhance corporate access to long-term debt financing holds significant theoretical and practical implications. Using listed companies on Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share markets as samples and based on stylized facts and Bayesian Nash equilibrium models, this study finds that higher stock price information efficiency promotes corporate acquisition of long-term debt financing. The mechanisms operate through: (1) Alleviating information asymmetry in debt relationships and effectively reducing debt financing costs elevated by risk premiums. (2) Enabling creditors to accurately identify corporate risks without relying on average market risk levels for pricing, thereby reducing debt financing costs for high-quality enterprises, suppressing "free-riding" behavior of low-quality enterprises, and mitigating adverse selection problems. (3) Enabling creditors to effectively avoid high-risk enterprises in credit decision-making and prevent corporate moral hazard behavior before debt disbursement; fully leveraging corporate governance effects to effectively curb enterprises from concealing risks to engage in overinvestment or transferring funds through underinvestment, thereby constraining corporate moral hazard behavior during the debt tenure period. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the promotional effect of stock price information efficiency on long-term debt financing shows no significant difference across enterprise sizes, while being more pronounced for enterprises with higher proportions of specialized assets and intangible assets. This study reveals the pathways through which stock price information efficiency drives corporate long-term debt financing, providing insights for expanding long-term capital supply and enhancing the accessibility and inclusiveness of the social financing system.
下载:
