摘要
为应对外部不确定性对就业市场的冲击,政府部门不断强调银行业金融机构应根据企业延期还本申请,通过贷款展期、续贷等方式,给予企业一定支持。以《贷款风险分类指引》的出台为“准自然实验”,本文考察了银行续贷政策收紧对企业劳动力雇佣决策的影响。研究发现,银行续贷政策收紧显著降低了企业劳动力雇佣规模,且该效应因企业融资约束的不同而呈现差异性。从企业层面来看,该效应在非国有企业、抵押品匮乏及SA指数高的企业更为凸显;从地区层面来看,该效应在财政压力大、金融深化程度低及银行密度低的地区更为凸显。机制检验发现,银行续贷政策收紧降低企业劳动力雇佣规模的核心机制在于流动性约束效应,具体表现为:企业的贷款规模减少和贷款期限缩短。进一步研究发现,银行续贷政策收紧还抑制了企业的投资规模和产出规模,但对企业的资本密集度没有显著影响。本文的研究从另一个视角支持了现阶段银行机构放松续贷标准的举措。
As economic recession is always accompanied by unemployment, the pressure on China’s employment market is increasing. According to the China Statistical Yearbook, China’s unemployed population reached 30 million in 2018, and the uncertainty from the macro environment such as trade disputes and COVID-19 even further pushed up the unemployment rate. Stabilizing employment becomes the primary task of the Chinese government at this stage, and the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China(CPC) has continuously introduced policies to stabilize the labor market. On July 31, 2018, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the CPC put forward the requirement of “keeping employment stable.” In April 2020, it once again emphasized paying particular attention to ensuring employment for workers. Furthermore, The Government Work Report of May 2020 pointed out that fiscal, monetary, and investment policies should pay particular attention to supporting stable employment and work hard to stabilize existing employment, actively create jobs, and promote re-employment. Credit management has long been one of the most important tools for governments to maintain social and economic stability, and the stability of bank credit is directly related to whether enterprises can survive in the face of uncertainties such as trade disputes and the COVID-19 pandemic. Accordingly, to encourage enterprises to stabilize existing jobs and actively create new jobs, government departments have been trying to guide credit flows to enterprises. For example, in 2018, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission issued a document declaring that banks should continue to provide financial support to enterprises that meet the credit conditions but encounter temporary operational difficulties and should not blindly withdraw or cut off loans. However, it is still not uncommon to see banks withdrawing and cutting off loans for enterprises. This leads to the question: Does bank loan withdrawal or rollover restrictions have a negative impact on the enterprises’ labor hiring decisions? And if yes, how? This paper attempts to answer this question. On July 3, 2007, the China Banking Regulatory Commission issued Guidelines for Classification of Loan Risks, which stipulates in Article 10 that loans that are newly borrowed to repay the old loans, or that are to be repaid by other means of financing should be classified as concerning loans. In other words, the practice of “borrowing the new loans to pay the old” is almost no longer feasible, which means that banks have tightened loan policies. This reform provides a good quasi-natural experiment to explore the impact of bank rollover restrictions on the labor hiring decisions of enterprises. Theoretically, the bank rollover restrictions may reduce the labor hiring of enterprises. Specifically, enterprises need to pay certain costs for hiring, including not only fixed expenses on recruitment, employee training, and employee compensation payments but also the cost of additional investment in individual workers, so firms need sufficient cash flows to afford the whole hiring and employment process. However, there is a time lag between cash flow generation and hiring cost payment, so firms need external financing to secure the whole hiring process. Besides, previous literature finds that the bank rollover restrictions directly lead to a smaller credit scale and a shorter credit period. Therefore, we speculate that the bank rollover restrictions could reduce the hiring scale of enterprises through the liquidity constraints channel.This paper finds that the bank rollover restrictions significantly reduce the labor hiring scale of enterprises, and this effect is distinct due to different financing constraints of enterprises. This effect is more prominent in non-state-owned, collateral-rich, and high-SA companies, and also in regions with high fiscal pressure, a low financial deepening level, and low banking density. The mechanism tests show that the core mechanism of bank rollover restrictions affecting the labor hiring scale of enterprises lies in the liquidity constraint effect, which is specifically manifested as a smaller credit scale, a shorter credit period, and higher financing costs. Furthermore, this paper finds that the bank rollover restrictions reduce corporate investment and output, but have no significant impact on corporate capital intensity.Compared to previous literature, this paper contributes to three streams of research. First, it enriches the literature on bank renewal policy reform and corporate behavior. There is only a few research that has examined the impact of bank rollover restrictions on export behavior, innovation, and performance. There is little literature examining the relationship between bank rollover restrictions and the labor hiring decisions of enterprises. Therefore, this paper will help broaden the research boundary of existing literature and further reveal the microeconomic effects of bank rollover restrictions. Second, this paper explains how bank rollover restrictions affect the labor hiring decisions of enterprises. The previous researches find that the lack of capital is not conducive to the expansion of labor. In contrast, this paper finds that the bank rollover restrictions significantly reduce the labor hiring scale of enterprises through liquidity constraint channels. In addition, unlike the identification strategy of the previous literature, this paper adopts a difference in differences estimation method to better address the possible endogeneity problem and thus provide more reliable empirical evidence. Third, it has clear policy implications. To encourage enterprises to expand the employment scale, the China Banking Regulatory Commission issued regulations in 2018 and 2020 respectively, emphasizing the importance to provide loan support to enterprises. This paper finds that the bank rollover restrictions hinder the expansion of labor hiring, suggesting that the relaxation of loan renewal criteria for enterprises is conducive to stabilizing employment. Additionally, our research findings support the current policy for banking institutions to relax the criteria for loan renewal.
作者
叶永卫
李佳轩
刘贯春
YE Yongwei;LI Jiaxuan;LIU Guanchun(Shanghai University of Financeand Economics,200433;Huazhong University of Science and Technology,430074;Sun Yat-sen University,510275)
出处
《财贸经济》
CSSCI
北大核心
2023年第1期83-98,共16页
Finance & Trade Economics
基金
国家社会科学基金重点项目“新发展格局构建中的金融资源有效配置机制研究”(21AJY011)。
关键词
续贷限制
流动性约束
劳动雇佣
稳就业
Rollover Restrictions
Liquidity Restrictions
Employment
Stabilizing the Job Market
作者简介
叶永卫,上海财经大学公共经济与管理学院博士研究生,200433;李佳轩,华中科技大学管理学院博士研究生,430074;通讯作者:刘贯春,中山大学岭南学院副教授、博士生导师,510275。电子邮箱:liuguanchunl@126.com。
