IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/jknowl/v16y2025i2d10.1007_s13132-024-02187-2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Digital Finance and Corporate Leverage Manipulation: Evidence from China

Author

Listed:
  • Lin Tian

    (Zhengzhou University)

  • Weilun Tian

    (Zhengzhou University)

  • Junru Guo

    (Nankai University)

  • Jiarui Wang

    (Nankai University)

Abstract

Corporate leverage manipulation conceals the actual leverage ratio and increases systemic financial risks. It is urgent to explore ways to govern corporate leverage manipulation. Using the sample of Chinese A-share listed firms from 2011 to 2021, this paper explores the impact of digital finance on corporate leverage manipulation. We find that digital finance can significantly reduce corporate leverage manipulation and remains consistent with robustness tests such as the instrumental variable method and difference-in-difference model. Mechanism analysis shows that this inhibition effect is achieved by restraining information asymmetry, easing financing constraints, and promoting digital transformation. Moreover, the effect of digital finance on inhibiting leverage manipulation is more pronounced in corporates with less analyst following, smaller total assets, and higher agency costs. Further analysis shows that digital finance, by restraining corporate leverage manipulation behavior, effectively lowers the risk of corporate debt default. Our research provides a new perspective to govern corporate leverage manipulation and expands the microeconomic consequences of digital finance.

Suggested Citation

  • Lin Tian & Weilun Tian & Junru Guo & Jiarui Wang, 2025. "Digital Finance and Corporate Leverage Manipulation: Evidence from China," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 16(2), pages 8755-8780, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:jknowl:v:16:y:2025:i:2:d:10.1007_s13132-024-02187-2
    DOI: 10.1007/s13132-024-02187-2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s13132-024-02187-2
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s13132-024-02187-2?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. Mu, Weiwei & Liu, Kefu & Tao, Yunqing & Ye, Yongwei, 2023. "Digital finance and corporate ESG," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    2. Ding, Na & Gu, Leilei & Peng, Yuchao, 2022. "Fintech, financial constraints and innovation: Evidence from China," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    3. Andreas Fuster & Matthew Plosser & Philipp Schnabl & James Vickery, 2019. "The Role of Technology in Mortgage Lending," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 32(5), pages 1854-1899.
    4. Daley, Lane A. & Vigeland, Robert L., 1983. "The effects of debt covenants and political costs on the choice of accounting methods : The case of accounting for R&D costs," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 195-211, April.
    5. Sreedhar T. Bharath & Paolo Pasquariello & Guojun Wu, 2009. "Does Asymmetric Information Drive Capital Structure Decisions?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(8), pages 3211-3243, August.
    6. Alexander Dyck & Adair Morse & Luigi Zingales, 2010. "Who Blows the Whistle on Corporate Fraud?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(6), pages 2213-2253, December.
    7. Hutton, Amy P. & Marcus, Alan J. & Tehranian, Hassan, 2009. "Opaque financial reports, R2, and crash risk," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(1), pages 67-86, October.
    8. Merton, Robert C, 1974. "On the Pricing of Corporate Debt: The Risk Structure of Interest Rates," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 29(2), pages 449-470, May.
    9. Li, Chengming & Wang, Yilin & Zhou, Zhihan & Wang, Zeyu & Mardani, Abbas, 2023. "Digital finance and enterprise financing constraints: Structural characteristics and mechanism identification," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 165(C).
    10. Thomas W. Scott & Christine I. Wiedman & Heather A. Wier, 2011. "Transaction Structuring and Canadian Convertible Debt," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 28(3), pages 1046-1071, September.
    11. Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff, 2011. "From Financial Crash to Debt Crisis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(5), pages 1676-1706, August.
    12. Christina Zhu, 2019. "Big Data as a Governance Mechanism," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 32(5), pages 2021-2061.
    13. Wei Jiang & Yanhui Hu & Hongjie Cao, 2024. "Does Digital Financial Inclusion Increase the Household Consumption? Evidence from China," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 15(4), pages 17333-17364, December.
    14. Ji, Yu & Shi, Lina & Zhang, Shunming, 2022. "Digital finance and corporate bankruptcy risk: Evidence from China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    15. John M. Griffin & Samuel Kruger & Prateek Mahajan, 2023. "Did FinTech Lenders Facilitate PPP Fraud?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 78(3), pages 1777-1827, June.
    16. Ao Yang & Mao Yang & Fuyong Zhang & Aza Azlina Md Kassim & Peixu Wang, 2024. "Has Digital Financial Inclusion Curbed Carbon Emissions Intensity? Considering Technological Innovation and Green Consumption in China," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 15(4), pages 19127-19156, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Wang, Xinyue & Cao, Yuqiang & Feng, Zhuoan & Lu, Meiting & Shan, Yaowen, 2023. "Local FinTech development and stock price crash risk," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    2. Ang, James & Yan, Zhenli & Xiao, Tusheng & Yuan, Chun & Wang, Jingfang, 2024. "Impact of Fintech on labor allocation efficiency in firms: Empirical evidence from China," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    3. Guosong Wang & Huizhen Zhang, 2025. "FinTech-Driven Corporate Sustainability: A Technology–Organization–Environment Framework Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 17(19), pages 1-28, September.
    4. Wang, Xiaodong & Deng, Yunfeng & Mao, Xiaomeng, 2025. "The impact of bank digital transformation on enterprises digital technology innovation in China," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    5. Tao Chen & Shinichi Kamiya & Pingyi Lou & Andreas Milidonis, 2023. "Analyst coverage, executive compensation and corporate risk‐taking: Evidence from property–casualty insurance firms," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 90(4), pages 899-939, December.
    6. 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.
    7. Wang, Yichen & Hu, Jun & Chen, Jia, 2023. "Does Fintech facilitate cross-border M&As? Evidence from Chinese A-share listed firms," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    8. Kose John & Xiaoran Ni & Chi Zhang, 2025. "Does Accelerated Patenting Information Dissemination Affect Managers’ (Un)Ethical Behavior? Evidence from the American Inventor’s Protection Act and Crash Risk," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 197(4), pages 739-759, April.
    9. Liu, Zhuang & Li, Rongnan & Zhou, Jinlan & Liu, Yue, 2025. "The risk management effect of bank fintech: Evidence from stock price crash risk," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    10. Wu, Fei & Hu, Yan & Shen, Me, 2024. "The color of FinTech: FinTech and corporate green transformation in China," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    11. Tan, Changchun & Mo, Lingyu & Wu, Xiaomeng & Zhou, Peng, 2024. "Fintech development and corporate credit risk: Evidence from an emerging market," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    12. Qiong Zhang & Zhihong Mao, 2025. "Digital Finance, Financing Constraints, and Green Innovation in Chinese Firms: The Roles of Management Power and CSR," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 17(15), pages 1-39, August.
    13. Sun, Guanglin & Li, Ting & Ai, Yongfang & Li, Qinghai, 2023. "Digital finance and corporate financial fraud," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    14. Zhe An & Wenlian Gao & Donghui Li & Feifei Zhu, 2018. "The Impact of Firm‐Level Illiquidity on Crash Risk and the Role of Media Independence: International Evidence," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 18(4), pages 547-593, December.
    15. Liu, Haiming & Hu, Jikong, 2025. "Bank Fintech and firm leverage adjustment speed: Evidence from China," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 73(PA).
    16. Ruan, Lei & Yang, Liwen, 2025. "Investor-company interactions and stock price crash risk: Evidence from China," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    17. Dewu Li & Zhusheng Wu & Qianjin Wu, 2024. "How Does Digital Finance Affect Sports Enterprise Innovation? Evidence from Chinese Sports Listed Enterprises," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(14), pages 1-21, July.
    18. Ayaz, Muhammad & Anwer, Zaheer & Hassan, M. Kabir & Xiaoyang, Xu, 2025. "Inhabiting influence of digital finance on stock price synchronicity," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    19. Xiang, Youtao & Borjigin, Sumuya, 2025. "Hedge funds network and stock price crash risk," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 75(PA).
    20. Song, Yunxing & Lee, Suin & Wang, Bin, 2025. "Digital finance and dividend policy: Evidence from China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).

    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:spr:jknowl:v:16:y:2025:i:2:d:10.1007_s13132-024-02187-2. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.