The Reform Of Property Right System And Debt Financing Behavior Of Enterprises

Debt financing is an important means for modern enterprises to absorb and gather external capital to achieve economies of scale and sustainable development.However,in the context of China's economic transformation and upgrading,innovation and development,the problem of corporate debt has become a major practical problem that perplexes the healthy development of enterprises.On the one hand,some enterprises have high debt level and unbalanced debt maturity structure,which lead to high leverage operation,liquidity risk and credit risk,endangering the safety of enterprises and the overall economy;on the other hand,some enterprises,especially small and medium-sized enterprises,have long been troubled by financing constraints,and the problems of"financing difficulty" and "financing expensive" can not be effectively solved.In recent years,the increasing reform of the financial supply side,the implementation of structural monetary policy instruments and the promulgation of the Property Law undoubtedly have made positive practical exploration to solve the above problems.Corporate debt is also the subject of corporate finance theory research.The existing research literature extensively pays attention to the impact of financial environment and policies,corporate characteristics,corporate governance,industry factors on corporate debt financing activities,and accumulates a wealth of research literature.However,the existing research lacks the research from the legal system level to reveal the impact of the implementation of specific laws on corporate debt financing behavior,which leads to the lack of the conclusion of the micro-foundation of the law in the existing research.The reform of the real right system marked by the implementation of the Property Law provides a quasi-natural experimental condition for exploring the micro-mechanism of law in theory.In view of this,this paper takes the listed companies in China from 2005 to 2012 as the research sample,theoretically analyses and empirically investigates the impact of the reform of the real right system on the debt financing behavior of enterprises and its ways of action from the aspects of the level of debt financing,the cost of debt financing and the structure of debt maturity.The findings of this study are as follows:(1)The implementation of the Property Law has significantly reduced the level of corporate debt financing,and the reduction of corporate debt financing level by the Property Law is achieved through strengthening the protection of property rights.This is mainly because the relevant provisions of the Property Law clearly define the principles of real right protection,implement the right to claim real rights and other ways of exercising real rights,and make specific provisions on the protection of ownership,thus effectively protecting real rights and stabilizing the development expectations of enterprises.Make enterprises pay more attention to long-term stable development,actively improve the proportion of endogenous financing and equity financing,and actively guard against bankruptcy risk,thus reducing the level of debt financing.(2)The implementation of Property Law has significantly reduced the cost of debt financing,and the way to reduce the cost of debt financing is to strengthen the protection of property rights.This is mainly because the relevant provisions of the Property Law clarify the principles of real right protection,implement the right to claim real rights and other ways of exercising real rights,and specify the protection of ownership,so as to effectively protect real rights,reduce the risk of loss of real rights and creditor's rights,reduce the cost of debt agency,and reduce the cost of debt financing.(3)The implementation of the Property Law has significantly shortened the debt maturity structure of enterprises,and the shortening of the debt maturity structure of enterprises by the Property Law is realized by giving full play to the utility of things,thereby increasing the proportion of business credit of enterprises.This is mainly due to the fact that the Property Law on the one hand clarifies that accounts receivable can be used as collateral against pledge,on the other hand,it improves the establishment and realization procedures of collateral against pledge.This enlarges the flexibility and convenience of enterprise's disposal of accounts receivable after the event,thus improving the power of enterprise to provide commercial credit for its trading partners in business transactions,and promoting the increase of the proportion of enterprise's commercial credit.Commercial credit is the main component of short-term debt of enterprises.The increase of the proportion of commercial credit will directly lead to the increase of the proportion of short-term debt of enterprises,and then shorten the debt maturity structure of enterprises.On the basis of the above research,this paper further examines the impact of property reform on the heterogeneity of corporate debt financing behavior from three aspects:enterprise heterogeneity,regional heterogeneity and industry heterogeneity.Finally,at the level of industry heterogeneity,the study finds that:(1)Compared with larger enterprises,the Property Law does not promote the debt financing level of smaller enterprises significantly.(2)Compared with large-scale enterprises,the Property Law does not significantly reduce the cost of debt financing for small-scale enterprises.(3)Compared with state-owned enterprises,the Property Law does not significantly extend the debt maturity structure of private enterprises.Secondly,at the level of regional heterogeneity,the study finds that the implementation of Property Law will promote the level of corporate debt financing,reduce the cost of debt financing,and shorten the debt maturity structure significantly in areas with lower degree of marketization than in areas with lower degree of marketization.Finally,at the level of industry heterogeneity,the study finds that the implementation of Property Law will promote the level of debt financing of enterprises in competitive industries to decrease significantly,the cost of debt financing to reduce significantly,and the debt maturity structure to shorten significantly compared with enterprises in monopolistic industries.In addition,this paper further analyses the effect of the reform of the real right system marked by the implementation of the Property Law on corporate performance by affecting corporate debt financing behavior.The results show that:(1)Property Law improves corporate performance by reducing the level of corporate debt financing.(2)Property Law improves corporate performance by reducing the cost of debt financing.(3)Property Law reduces corporate performance by shortening the debt maturity structure.Compared with the existing literature,this paper may have the following innovations:Firstly,on the theoretical level of corporate finance,this paper takes the Property Law as an exogenous event,examines the impact of the reform of the real right system marked by the implementation of the Property Law on the debt financing behavior of enterprises and its ways of action.The results show that the reform of the real right system marked by the implementation of the Property Law has a significant impact on the debt financing behavior of enterprises.It provides a new explanation for the existing debt financing behavior and enriches the research literature of law and corporate finance theory.Secondly,in the aspect of policy evaluation,this paper scientifically evaluates the effect of the reform of the real right system marked by the implementation of the Property Law from three aspects of corporate debt financing behavior(debt financing level,debt financing cost and debt maturity structure),which enriches the research literature on the economic effect of the Property Law.Since the promulgation of the Property Law,scholars at home and abroad have assessed the effect of its implementation in the fields of enterprise value,investment,innovation and so on.However,the research on the Property Law and corporate debt financing behavior is very limited.Different from the existing literature,this paper evaluates the effect of Property Law on the level of debt financing and the cost of debt financing,and evaluates the effect of Property Law on the debt maturity structure of enterprises from the perspective of the utility of products.This provides new evidence for the scientific evaluation of the effect of the reform of the real right system.