Supply Chain Finance And The Diversification Response Of Core Enterprises

In recent years,the Chinese government has issued a series of policies to encourage the private capital to be injected into the real economy and increase support for SMEs(small and medium-sized enterprises).However,due to objective issues such as lack of collateral,opaque information,non-standard finance policy rules,and low level of credit,Chinese enterprises,especially SMEs,still face severe financing bottlenecks during the development.The problem of "financing difficulties" for SMEs has become a key factor leading to the imbalance of market competition and national economic development.In this context,financial technology based on big data,blockchain,cloud computing,etc.came into being.And supply chain finance is a more mature and widely used innovative tool.Core enterprises can effectively integrate each participant in the supply chain into a new symbiotic ecosystem by developing supply chain financial services.Thus they can improve the overall competitiveness of the supply chain,and form an industrial ecological pattern of mutually beneficial coexistence and sustainable development eventually.However,few people have studied the impact of developing supply chain finance on the investment and operating activities of core enterprises.In this article,166 listed enterprises that have developed supply chain finance from 2011 to 2017 are used as the experimental group samples.550 listed enterprises without SCF are selected as control group samples by using neighbor matching of PSM propensity score matching method.And 716 sample enterprises data are finally obtained.The research in this paper is divided into three parts,including the relationship between the supply chain finance and diversification response of enterprises,the impact of market power and free cash flow on this relationship and the economic consequences of enterprises' diversification response.Through theoretical analysis and empirical tests,this article draws the following conclusions:First,developing supply chain finance can significantly reduce the degree of core enterprises' diversification.Second,the increase of market power can enhance the effect of enterprises' diversification response.Third,the increase of free cash flow can inhibit the effect of enterprises' diversification response.Fourth,supply chain finance reduce the degree of core enterprises' diversification which will lead to the increase of investment efficiency and production efficiency of enterprises.At present,there are few literatures on empirical research on supply chain finance.And more researches regard supply chain finance as a new financial tool or a means to alleviate the financing difficulties of SMEs.Few researches focus on the perspective of core enterprises.This article takes core enterprises as research objects,and uses empirical tests to explore the relationship between supply chain finance and enterprises'diversification response,as well as its impact factor and economic effect.On the one hand,this paper enriches the research on supply chain finance and enterprise diversification in academia.On the other hand,it also provides effective suggestions for enterprises to develop supply chain finance.