IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/reveco/v88y2023icp237-257.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

State ownership and credit rationing: Evidence From China

Author

Listed:
  • Gao, Han
  • Li, Jie
  • Liu, Fang
  • Wu, Jin

Abstract

We investigate the impact of a firm’s ownership on credit rationing. We find that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are less likely to be credit rationed than non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs). After controlling for a large set of control variables, we find that SOEs are 12.22 percent less likely to experience credit rationing in comparison to non-SOEs. This finding is robust to different definitions of SOEs and other regression methods accounting for omitted variables bias and endogeneity problems. Furthermore, the effects of state ownership on credit rationing are heterogeneous among different cities. Specifically, SOEs are less likely to be credit rationed in cities with low financial development and high government intervention. This may reflect the fact that implicit government guarantees of SOEs are more effective in these cities.

Suggested Citation

  • Gao, Han & Li, Jie & Liu, Fang & Wu, Jin, 2023. "State ownership and credit rationing: Evidence From China," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 237-257.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:reveco:v:88:y:2023:i:c:p:237-257
    DOI: 10.1016/j.iref.2023.06.014
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105905602300182X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.iref.2023.06.014?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sapienza, Paola, 2004. "The effects of government ownership on bank lending," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 357-384, May.
    2. David Mushinski, 1999. "An analysis of offer functions of banks and credit unions in Guatemala," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(2), pages 88-112.
    3. Cull, Robert & Xu, Lixin Colin, 2005. "Institutions, ownership, and finance: the determinants of profit reinvestment among Chinese firms," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 117-146, July.
    4. Lin William Cong & Haoyu Gao & Jacopo Ponticelli & Xiaoguang Yang, 2019. "Credit Allocation Under Economic Stimulus: Evidence from China," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 32(9), pages 3412-3460.
    5. Allen, Franklin & Qian, Jun & Qian, Meijun, 2005. "Law, finance, and economic growth in China," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 57-116, July.
    6. Levine, Ross, 2005. "Finance and Growth: Theory and Evidence," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 12, pages 865-934, Elsevier.
    7. Berger, Allen N. & Udell, Gregory F., 2006. "A more complete conceptual framework for SME finance," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(11), pages 2945-2966, November.
    8. Astami, Emita W. & Tower, Greg, 2006. "Accounting-policy choice and firm characteristics in the Asia Pacific region: An international empirical test of Costly Contracting Theory," The International Journal of Accounting, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 1-21.
    9. Degryse, Hans & Havrylchyk, Olena & Jurzyk, Emilia & Kozak, Sylwester, 2012. "Foreign bank entry, credit allocation and lending rates in emerging markets: Empirical evidence from Poland," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(11), pages 2949-2959.
    10. Brandt, Loren & Li, Hongbin, 2003. "Bank discrimination in transition economies: ideology, information, or incentives?," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 387-413, September.
    11. Cull, Robert & Xu, Lixin Colin, 2003. "Who gets credit? The behavior of bureaucrats and state banks in allocating credit to Chinese state-owned enterprises," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 533-559, August.
    12. Li, Hongbin & Meng, Lingsheng & Wang, Qian & Zhou, Li-An, 2008. "Political connections, financing and firm performance: Evidence from Chinese private firms," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(2), pages 283-299, October.
    13. Li, Jie & Lan, Liping & Ouyang, Zhigang, 2020. "Credit constraints, currency depreciation and international trade," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 104(C).
    14. Lin, Huidan, 2011. "Foreign bank entry and firms' access to bank credit: Evidence from China," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 1000-1010, April.
    15. Chong, Terence Tai-Leung & Lu, Liping & Ongena, Steven, 2013. "Does banking competition alleviate or worsen credit constraints faced by small- and medium-sized enterprises? Evidence from China," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(9), pages 3412-3424.
    16. Lu, Zhengfei & Zhu, Jigao & Zhang, Weining, 2012. "Bank discrimination, holding bank ownership, and economic consequences: Evidence from China," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 341-354.
    17. Wang, Qian & Wong, T.J. & Xia, Lijun, 2008. "State ownership, the institutional environment, and auditor choice: Evidence from China," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 112-134, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nguyen Cong Thanh & Nguyen Hoang Hai & Nguyen Hoang Phu & Minh Ly Duc, 2024. "“Shall Absolute Power Corrupt Absolutely?†: A Perspective From Financial Constraints and Earnings Quality Under Government Control," SAGE Open, , vol. 14(3), pages 21582440241, July.
    2. Kuai, Yicheng & Wang, Peiwen & Huang, Guanglin, 2025. "Corporate ESG performance and credit misallocation: Evidence from China," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 73(PA).
    3. John Chung, 2025. "Firm Heterogeneity, Misallocation, and Trade," Working Papers 25-33, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Guo, Kai & Ke, Bin & Tang, Song, 2023. "Private firms' financial constraints and share pledging by controlling shareholders of publicly listed firms: Evidence from China," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    2. Cull, Robert & Li, Wei & Sun, Bo & Xu, Lixin Colin, 2015. "Government connections and financial constraints: Evidence from a large representative sample of Chinese firms," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 271-294.
    3. Li, Kai & Yue, Heng & Zhao, Longkai, 2009. "Ownership, institutions, and capital structure: Evidence from China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 471-490, September.
    4. Zhang, Dongyang & Liu, Deqiang, 2017. "Determinants of the capital structure of Chinese non-listed enterprises: Is TFP efficient?," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 179-202.
    5. Ding, Haoyuan & Hu, Yichuan & Kim, Kenneth A. & Xie, Mi, 2023. "Relationship-based debt financing of Chinese private sector firms: The role of social connections to banks versus political connections," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    6. Shi, Yang & Li, Jiachen & Liu, Ruiming, 2023. "Financing constraints and share pledges: Evidence from the share pledge reform in China," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    7. Cull,Robert J. & Gan,Li & Gao,Nan & Xu,L. Colin & Cull,Robert J. & Gan,Li & Gao,Nan & Xu,L. Colin, 2015. "Dual credit markets and household access to finance : evidence from a representative Chinese household survey," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7454, The World Bank.
    8. Huang, Zhen & Gao, Ning & Jia, Ming, 2023. "Green credit and its obstacles: Evidence from China's green credit guidelines," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    9. Kusnadi, Yuanto & Yang, Zhifeng & Zhou, Yuxiao, 2015. "Institutional development, state ownership, and corporate cash holdings: Evidence from China," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 351-359.
    10. Cheng, Chao & Yang, Liu, 2022. "What drives the credit constraints faced by Chinese small and micro enterprises?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    11. Firth, Michael & Lin, Chen & Liu, Ping & Wong, Sonia M.L., 2009. "Inside the black box: Bank credit allocation in China's private sector," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 1144-1155, June.
    12. Lei Xu & Qian Liu & Bin Li & Chen Ma, 2022. "Fintech business and firm access to bank loans," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 62(4), pages 4381-4421, December.
    13. Liu, Beibei & Tan, Keqi & Wong, Sonia M.L. & Yip, Rita W.Y., 2022. "Intra-industry information transfer in emerging markets: Evidence from China," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    14. Lu, Zhengfei & Zhu, Jigao & Zhang, Weining, 2012. "Bank discrimination, holding bank ownership, and economic consequences: Evidence from China," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 341-354.
    15. Guo, Shen & Lin, Guiting & Ouyang, Alice Y., 2023. "Are pro-SME credit policies effective? Evidence from shadow banking in China," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    16. Liu, Jinyu & Wang, Zhengwei & Zhu, Wuxiang, 2021. "Does privatization reform alleviate ownership discrimination? Evidence from the Split-share structure reform in China," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    17. Firth, Michael & Lin, Chen & Wong, Sonia M.L., 2008. "Leverage and investment under a state-owned bank lending environment: Evidence from China," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 14(5), pages 642-653, December.
    18. Liu, Qigui & Pan, Xiaofei & Tian, Gary Gang, 2018. "To what extent did the economic stimulus package influence bank lending and corporate investment decisions? Evidence from China," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 177-193.
    19. Hua Shang & Quanyun Song & Yu Wu, 2017. "Credit Market Development and Firm Innovation: Evidence from the People’s Republic of China," ADBI Working Papers 649, Asian Development Bank Institute.
    20. Lanlan Liu & Dan Luo & Liang Han, 2019. "Default risk, state ownership and the cross-section of stock returns: evidence from China," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 53(4), pages 933-966, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:reveco:v:88:y:2023:i:c:p:237-257. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/620165 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.