How does Banking Competition Affect the Import of Enterprises?Empirical Evidence from Chinese Industrial Enterprises
The Chinese government regards expanding import scale,optimizing import structure and improving import quality as its development strategy under the"new normal"of economy.Based on the data of Chinese manufacturing micro-enterprises and bank branches from 2000 to 2013,this paper systematically examines the impact of banking competition on enterprises'imports and the mechanism.The results show that:Banking competition significantly promotes the expansion of the import scale of enterprises.The mechanism test shows that the easing of financing constraints and the expansion of produc-tion scale are important ways in which bank competition promotes enterprise import.Bank-ing competition plays a greater role in promoting the import of non-state-owned enterprises,small and medium-sized enterprises,general trading enterprises and opaque information enterprises;In addition,from the perspective of product types,the promotion effect of banking competition on the import of consumer goods is the largest,followed by the import of intermediate goods,and has no significant impact on the import of capital goods.Further research shows that,the competition of joint-stock and city commercial banks promotes the import of enterprises,especially small and medium-sized enterprises to a greater extent.Moreover,banking competition also significantly promotes the high-quality development of imports,including improving import diversification and import quality,and extending the import duration.The research in this paper not only provides a novel explanation for the rapid development of China's import in recent years,but also has important policy implications for the further reform of the banking industry.
Banking CompetitionImport of EnterprisesHigh-quality Development of ImportFinancing ConstraintScale Expansion