Research On The Effect Of Opening Of China Railway High-speed On Firm Financing Constraints

As the construction of the national high-speed railway network continues to advance,domestic transportation has achieved cost reductions and efficiency gains,and the opening of high-speed railways has greatly shortened the geographical distance between enterprises and effectively established a "development network" of information interchange,capital flow,resource sharing and close communication.This not only promotes the economic development of the regions along the route at the macro level,but also has a profound impact on the enterprises themselves at the micro level.Compared to developed countries.China’s financial resources are not yet well allocated and financing constraints are limiting the sustainable development of enterprises.Therefore,it is of strong theoretical and practical significance to study the impact of the opening of high-speed rail on corporate financing constraints at the micro level.Guided by MM theory,principal-agent theory,new economic geography.information asymmetry and financing constraints and other relevant theories,this paper establishes a basic logical framework for the impact of the opening of high-speed rail on corporate financing constraints.Through theoretical analysis,it is found that the opening of highspeed rail not only speeds up the transmission of soft information that relies on verbal communication and reduces transaction costs such as information search,but also weakens the hindrance brought by regulatory distance to the regulatory mechanism,and regulatory institutions can supervise and guide listed companies more conveniently and closely,making hard information more effective,reducing information asymmetry between different economic agents,reducing principal-agent conflicts,and also reducing adverse selection and moral hazard of external stakeholders,lowering the cost of external financing,and ultimately reducing the degree of corporate financing constraints.This paper uses panel data of A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2008 to 2019,and divides all data into experimental and control groups according to the year before and after the implementation of the HSR opening policy using the double difference method(DID).Through the analysis and comparison of various financing constraint measurement indicators,the cash-cash flow sensitivity indicator that can effectively measure the financing constraint is selected,and an empirical In order to ensure the reliability of the research results,this paper also conducts robustness tests by three methods,namely double-difference parallel trend hypothesis test,variable substitution method by replacing the financing constraint measures and placebo test by defining pseudo-high-speed rail opening variables,to exclude the influence of unobserved factors on the findings of this paper.The robustness results remain consistent with the main regression results.The findings of this paper are as follows:(1)The opening and operation of high-speed railways can help reduce the reliance of enterprises on internal funds and,to a certain extent,alleviate their financing constraints.(2)The opening of high-speed railways can alleviate the degree of information asymmetry caused by geographical distance through the channel of increasing the frequency of analysts’ field research,which in turn can alleviate the financing constraints of enterprises.(3)There is significant heterogeneity in the nature of property rights,scale heterogeneity,industry heterogeneity and regional heterogeneity in the impact of HSR opening on financing constraints,with HSR opening operations playing a more significant role in alleviating financing constraints for private enterprises,smallscale enterprises,high-tech enterprises and enterprises in East and South China.Based on the above findings,the recommendations put forward in this paper are:the government should recognise the positive role played by transport infrastructure in resource allocation,promote the construction of HSR and plan HSR stations rationally;investors and regulators should make full use of the travel advantages brought about by the opening of HSR,strengthen field visits to listed companies and reduce the degree of information asymmetry;enterprises should actively cooperate with analysts’ research and consciously accept external supervision.The choice of enterprise location should take into account the economic effect of high-speed rail.