Social Credit Environment and Cross-regional Capital Flows:A Study Based on Pilot Policies of Social Credit System Reform and Enterprises' Off-site Investments
A perfect social credit environment is the "cornerstone" for the construction of a unified national market,which is of great significance in guiding the full flow and efficient allocation of capital factors. In this paper,we manually organize the data of A-share listed companies' offshore investment activities from 2008 to 2021,and use the pilot policy of social credit system reform as a quasi-natural experiment to identi-fy the impact of the improvement of the social credit environment on the cross-regional flow of capital. It is found that the pilot policy of social credit system reform leads to an average relative higher number of new offshore subsidiaries acquired by the pilot cities by about 2. 33％. Mechanism analysis finds that an improved social credit environment can facilitate firms' cross-regional investment activities by lowering firms' transac-tion costs,easing firms' external financing constraints,and reducing firms' perceptions of uncertainty. Het-erogeneity analysis finds that the improvement of social credit environment promotes the cross-regional in-vestment activities of enterprises in high contract-intensity industries and industries with high external finan-cing needs,and facilitates the flow of capital from the eastern region to the central and western regions. This paper enriches the research on the factors affecting capital flows across regions from the perspective of credit environment,and provides policy references for the construction of a unified national market and the con-struction of a new "double-cycle" development pattern.
Social Credit EnvironmentPilot Policies of Social Credit System ReformEnterprise Investment in Different PlacesCapital Flows Across RegionsUnified National Market
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