| China’s economy is shifting from speed to quality,and the growth of enterprises is shifting from factor-driven to innovation-driven.Financing constraint is undoubtedly the main problem during the corporates’ transformation and upgrading.The World Bank survey also pointed out that 75%of Chinese companies mentioned financing constraints as the main factor hindering development.To solve this problem,supply chain finance(SCF),a new financing tool relying on the supply chain,has been widely used.Supply chain finance uses emerging technologies and relies on the credit of core firms to create a "1+N" financing model for the production and operation activities of suppliers and manufacturers radiating in both the upstream and downstream directions of the supply chain,which improves the overall financing capacity of the supply chain and eases the financing constraints faced by Chinese enterprises,especially small and medium-sized enterprises.At the same time,supply chain finance also improves the capital flow efficiency of the supply chain,strengthens the stability of the supply chain,consolidates the foundation of the main business of the enterprise,and coordinates the smooth operation of the supply chain "supply-production-marketing".Given the important role of supply chain finance in consolidating the stability of the industrial chain and alleviating the financing constraints of enterprises,the academic community has carried out extensive research on it.At present,the series research of the economic consequences of SCF are always growing,and the research level has shifted from focusing on creditors and small and medium-sized enterprises to the study of core entities in the supply chain,but there is no literature to discuss the relationship between supply chain finance and the accounting information quality of core enterprises.Core enterprises have higher information and settlement master control advantages in the supply chain,through credit lending to introduce financial institutions to supply chain activities,and ease the financing tension of the supply chain,so that the various participants in the supply chain can effectively integrate into a new ecological network,and strengthen the guidance of collaborative enterprises in the supply chain to arrange the internal production activities of the enterprise in an orderly,measured and effective manner by using closed-loop transactions of information flow,capital flow,logistics,and other resources.On the one hand,after the core enterprises carry out supply chain financing activities,they improve the "health" of their operation and financial level,which makes enterprises more willing to improve accounting soundness subjectively;on the other hand,financial institutions will supervise credit enterprises to improve accounting soundness to avoid the risk of corporate insolvency and require them to confirm possible liabilities or losses in advance in finance,which objectively improves the accounting soundness of enterprises.In this paper,taking China’s A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2019 as a research sample,we collect and obtain samples from the experimental group of enterprises that carry out supply chain finance business,and compare them with the samples after using PSM technology.Then,taking the core enterprises as the breakthrough point,the regression model is constructed,which empirically tests the impact of supply chain finance on accounting soundness and its mechanism of action,and expands the study of the differential impact of supply chain finance on the relationship between accounting soundness in different conditions.The empirical test results show that the supply chain finance of core enterprises can significantly improve the accounting soundness of enterprises,and this result has passed the robustness test of changing the measurement method of main variables and changing the size of the sample.This shows that core enterprises will indeed improve the quality of their accounting information and enhance the soundness of accounting after SCF.Drawing on this conclusion,this paper confirms the path role played by the operational risk mitigation mechanism and the financial risk mitigation mechanism in the process of improving the accounting soundness of supply chain finance through empirical testing.Finally,this paper uses the shareholding ratio,property rights difference,and internal control level of institutional investors for group regression analysis,and finds that the improvement effect of supply chain finance business on the accounting soundness of core enterprises is more significant among enterprises that are not dominant in non-state-owned enterprises,institutional investors,and have low internal control levels.The main research contributions in this paper are threefold.First,based on the perspective of core enterprises,this paper obtains the data on whether enterprises carry out supply chain finance through manual Baidu search and annual report retrieval,and uses these data to confirm the impact of supply chain finance from the level of accounting information quality,and enriches the relevant empirical research on supply chain finance.Second,this paper uniquely starts from the new financing tool of supply chain finance,discusses its impact on the accounting soundness of core enterprises,and broadens the research boundary of the factors affecting accounting soundness.Third,this paper finds that supply chain finance has a positive governance effect on the accounting soundness of core enterprises,which has important practical implication for stabilizing and enhancing China’s financial market,providing new theoretical support for the Chinese government to further promote the development of supply chain finance,and also providing a reference for market investors’actions. |
