Abstract:

Based on the background of US monetary easing policy and the fact of the leverage growth of non-financial enterprises in China, this paper discusses the relationship between the leverage growth of Chinese enterprises and US monetary policy. The empirical results show that although US monetary easing policy will have a significant impact on the leverage growth of Chinese non-financial enterprises, the impact on foreign-owned enterprises is smaller than that on non-foreign-owned enterprises. Theoretical analysis indicates that it is because foreign-owned enterprises are more likely to attract foreign investment and have better performance than non-foreign-owned enterprises, which will reduce their debt-financing demand and make the leverage growth smaller. At the same time, the promotion of financial marketization will reduce the degree of monopoly of state-owned banks and the uneven distribution of domestic credit resources, which will alleviate the impact of US monetary policy; and the role of financial marketization and foreign ownership are mutually substituted to a certain extent. Therefore, in the regions with higher financial marketization, the difference in the impact of US monetary policy easing will be smaller. The analysis above is confirmed by introducing the interaction term of regional financial marketization into the benchmark model.
This paper makes further analysis from the following aspects: financial marketization segmentation, the influence mechanism of foreign ownership, enterprise investment analysis and capital market opening. First of all, this paper divides the financial marketization index into two secondary indexes-the credit fund allocation and the financial industry competition-to analyze the impact of diverse financial-marketization. The empirical results show that the marketization of the credit fund allocation can effectively alleviate the impact of the US loose monetary policy on the leverage growth of China’s non-financial enterprises as a whole, and it has a weak substitution with the foreign shareholding behavior; the stronger competition in the financial industry has a weak mitigation effect on the promotion effect of US monetary policy, and it has a strong substitution with the foreign shareholding behavior. Secondly, this paper tests the significance of the influence of the foreign equity through the internal financing and the equity financing to alleviate the impact of US monetary easing policy. The empirical results show that when the United States implements loose monetary policy, the smaller leverage growth of foreign-owned enterprises is mainly due to the strengthening of the internal financing capacity, rather than the increase of the equity financing sources. Furthermore, this paper discusses the differences of the impact of US monetary policy on the investment expenditure of foreign-owned enterprises and non-foreign-owned enterprises. The empirical results show that although the US monetary easing policy will make the leverage growth of foreign-owned enterprises smaller than that of non-foreign-owned enterprises, there is no significant difference between the investment of these two kinds of enterprises. This paper maintains that a possible reason is that a considerable part of the debt financing of domestic enterprises is put into other investment rather than the productive investment, such as the shadow banking behavior of the quasi finance which has attracted much attention in recent years. Finally, based on the economic background of launching the Shanghai-Hongkong stock connect in 2014, this paper analyzes the impact of the capital market opening. The empirical results show that the opening of “the Shanghai-Hongkong stock connect” has indeed promoted the diversified development of financing channels of non-financial enterprises in China, thus significantly alleviating the impact of the US monetary easing policy on the leverage growth of enterprises, but has not further expanded the leverage growth difference between foreign-owned enterprises and non-foreign-owned enterprises.

Key words: US Monetary Policy, Leverage Growth, Foreign Ownership

摘要：

以美国货币宽松政策背景和我国非金融企业杠杆增长事实为基础,探讨了中国企业杠杆增长和美国货币政策之间的联系。实证结果表明:虽然美国宽松货币政策会显著促进中国非金融企业杠杆增长,但对外资持股企业杠杆增长的促进影响要小于无外资持股企业。在金融市场化程度越高的地区,上述影响和影响差异会越小。外资持股主要是通过加强企业内部融资能力,而不是股权融资优势来缓解美国货币政策宽松的杠杆增长促进影响。伴随美国货币政策宽松而增加的融资供给没有被无外资持股企业同步用于资本性投资,有相当一部分用于其他投资。沪港通政策可减小美国货币政策变化带来的中国企业杠杆波动。

关键词: 美国货币政策, 杠杆增长, 外资持股