Research On The Impact Of Short-selling Mechanism On The Level Of Corporate Debt

In March 31 2010,China officially launched the margin trading pilot,which meant the short selling mechanism developed in capitalist countries and regions for many years was first introduced into our country.By the end of 2018,the number of stocks in the pilot range has increased from 90 to 949,and only the stocks of listed companies in the pilot are eligible for short selling.Since the introduction of this system,many scholars have taken it as the research object to investigate the positive effects of short selling mechanism on improving the pricing efficiency of the capital market.However,in addition to being able to improve the resource allocation of capital market,can short selling mechanism optimize the resource allocation of enterprises? Emerging just in recent years,the research scale of this issue is small and the research perspective is insufficient,which only involves the impact of the introduction of short selling mechanism on earnings management,enterprise investment and other aspects.While,whether the short selling mechanism can affect the debt level of enterprises has not been studied systematically.On the other hand,under the background of "supply-side structural reform",the issue of excessive debt of non-financial enterprises is a hot topic at present.However,there is no related studies about short selling mechanism in the mature system of research on factors affecting the debt level.In view of this,this paper combines the gradual implementation of the short selling mechanism in China with the realistic task of reducing the debt level of non-financial enterprises,studies whether the introduction of short selling mechanism can lead over-indebted listed companies to reduce the debt level,and examines whether the management shareholding,institutional investors shareholding and the nature of property right can influence this effect.This paper first systematically comb the concepts,theories and literatures related to the short selling mechanism and capital structure.On this basis,the research hypothesises are derived by theoretical derivation.Then,the empirical survey is carried out based on the relevant data of A share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets,and the following conclusions are drawn:(1)the short selling mechanism can indeed reduce the debt level of over-indebted companies,but can not affect the debt level of those with insufficient debt;(2)this effect is more significant to state-owned enterprises and enterprises with higher shareholding ratio of management,while the shareholding ratio of institutional investors does not affect this effect.In the end,in view of the above findings,this paper puts forward some suggestions from the perspectives of developing and improving the short selling mechanism and further optimizing the corporate governance.