Does Merchant Guild Culture Reduce the Cost of Debt? Evidence from China

Using hand-collected data on merchant guild culture and a sample over 2003–2019, this study examines the effect of merchant guild culture on the cost of debt. Our findings reveal that merchant guild culture is negatively associated with the cost of debt, suggesting that merchant guild culture rooted in ancient China continuously affects corporate behaviour, builds the borrower-lender trust relationship by strengthening ethical standards of borrowers, and eventually reduces the cost of debt. The above findings are robust to a variety of sensitivity tests and using the PSM approach, two-stage IV regression procedures and regression discontinuity design to address the endogeneity. Moreover, channel tests show that merchant guild culture reduces the cost of debt by depressing the default risks. Furthermore, our main findings are more pronounced for firms in regions with lower extent of Marketisation and higher risk taking, firms with lower managerial ownership and lower ratio of independent directors.