Research Of Financial Behavior And Financial Development Based On Cultural Characteristics

Zingeles(2015)put forward the view of “Cultural Revolution in finance” in the special issue of “culture and finance” of Journal of Financial Economics,which indicates that the current financial academic pay great attention to the cross discipline of culture and finance.Compared with foreign scholars,Chinese scholars' research on culture and finance started relatively late,and most of them take China as the research sample,lack of in-depth empirical research on China's surrounding countries.On the other hand,the “Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road”(namely,“Belt and Road”)proposed by President Xi Jinping has become an important part of China's opening up strategy.The “Belt and Road” territory across the three continents of Asia,Europe and Africa,with the complex ethnic and religious beliefs in countries along the “Belt and Road”,and provide an excellent sample for Chinese scholars to study culture and finance.Therefore,on the background of cultural and financial research has been gradually valued and China's “Belt and Road”strategic vision is progressively promoted,to empirical study the relationship between cultural characteristics and regional financial development and corporate financial behavior undoubtedly has important theoretical value and practical significance.On the basis of combing the previous research,This paper firstly revised and expands the model of the financing choice of firms under asymmetric situation of Holmstrom and Tirole(1998,2000)?Yang(2015)and endogenous financial structure model of firms financing choice of Chakraborty and Ray(2006,2007)?Ji(2014).Among Chinese scholars,this paper tentatively constructs a theoretical model of the influence of cultural characteristics on corporate debt maturity structure and regional financial development,and puts forward corresponding research hypotheses according to the theoretical model and the corresponding theoretical basis.Moreover,this paper applies the mainstream research methods of cultural finance,uses the Hofstede national cultural dimension and Desmetet al.(2017)national cultural diversity index represent the cultural characteristics of a country,following the research idea from micro to macro to typical cases,empirical study influence on cultural characteristics to the national macro financial development and corporate financial behavior on specific countries along the “Belt and Road”.After cross-country analysis,this paper also selects one typical cultural difference country,namely,Malaysia to empirial study the influence of the differences between Islamic culture and Buddhist culture on corporate financial behavior.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows:The results of the theoretical model show that cultural characteristics,as the characteristics of a country's informal institutional environment,as well as the formal system,will have an impact on the country's corporate financial behavior through entrepreneurial behavior and intergenerational inheritance,and then have an impact on the country's financial development.This paper divides specific countries along the “Belt and Road” into five regions,namely,ASEAN,South Asia,Central Asia,Western Asia and Europe,and cultural characteristics of each region are analyzed.The findings of this chapter is that the culture and religious beliefs were complex,forming a remarkable diversity of cultural characteristics on specific countries along the “Belt and Road”.Power Distance Index,Individualism,Masculinity and Uncertainty Avoidance have positive impact on proportion of short-term debt on enterprises;Long-term Orientation of Hofstede national cultural dimension has negative impact on proportion of short-term debt on enterprises;cultural diversity has a positive effect on firm's short-term debt ratio.However,the effect of cultural characteristics on debt maturity structure mainly exists in non state-owned enterprises.The results do not change after a series of robustness tests and endogenous treatments,The main mechanism of cultural diversity affecting corporate debt maturity structure is cultural effect.Moreover,among the listed firms in Malaysia,the higher the proportion of Malay shares,the more inclined the firm to finance through long-term debt,the lower the proportion of cash holdings and the higher the dividend distribution ratio.However,the higher the proportion of Chinese shareholding in listed firms,the company will prefer short-term debt,which has no obvious impact on the company's cash holdings,and the dividend distribution ratio is low.The more equity allocated to Malays in IPO,the more long-term debt,less cash holding and more dividend distribution.The results did not change after using instrumental variables and DID test of Prime Minister Najib's relaxation of mandatory equity distribution policy in 2009.The results of mechanism test show that the Buddhist culture represented by Chinese equity in listed firms tend to expand the scale of enterprises,increase the operating leverage of enterprises,imporve the amount of investment,add the number of Chinese directors and reduce the number of politically connected directors.Last but no least,Power Distance Index,Masculinity,Uncertainty Avoidance and Long-term Orientation of Hofstede national cultural dimension have negative impact on the country's financial development;Individualism of Hofstede national cultural dimension has positive impact on the country's financial development;cultural diversity has a negative effect on national financial development.After replacing the explanatory variables and the explained variables,the results were still robust.Genetic characteristics and the proportion of religious population are more appropriate instrumental variables to replace national cultural dimensions,the river characteristics and altitude gradient characteristics of the country are more appropriate instrumental variables to replace cultural diversity,the results of dealing with endogenous problems with instrumental variables are still robust,the main mechanism of cultural diversity affecting national financial development lies in the decline of overall social trust caused by multiculturalism.The finding of this paper is consistent with the conclusions of the main literature of culture and finance,it also expands the depth and breadth of cross research of Chinese scholars in cultural finance,and it provides empirical evidence from the cultural and financial level to the “Belt and Road”.