Financial constraints, capital misallocation and firm’s total factor productivity (TFP) loss – empirical evidence from listed manufacturing companies in China

ABSTRACT

Based on the theoretical mechanism that ‘financing constraints (investment-cash flow sensitivity) → capital misallocation → firm’s total factor productivity’ and ADL(2,2) model, implied cost model, total factor productivity model, panel regression model and mediation effect model, we empirically investigate the impact of financing constraints on TFP loss and the mediating effect of capital misallocation. Finance and market transaction data for manufacturing companies listed on Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges during 2009–2019 are used in the empirical study. Chinese manufacturing companies were shown to have investment-cash flow sensitivity. The empirical analysis proved that financing constraints not only have direct negative impact on the firm’s TFP directly but also negatively affect the TFP by the mediating effect of capital misallocation. Moreover, firm heterogeneity analysis showed that the above two impacts were greater for non-stated owned firms, small and medium-sized firms, and young firms than stated-owned firms, big firms and mature firms.

KEYWORDS:

• Financing constraints
• capital misallocation
• total factor productivity loss
• weighted average cost of capital
• mediating effect model

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• E22
• D92
• O47

Acknowledgments

This work is partially supported by grants from the Key Program of Humanities and Social Science of Colleges in Zhejiang Province (No. 2016ZB003).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest among the authors.

Notes

¹ The softer bound of the budget: Soft bound of the budget describes a phenomenon that government provide explicit or implicit guarantees for corporate financing. Government supports some SOEs that must sacrifice their profits and efficiency to undertake social responsibilities, thus being lack of competence in the market.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics Field Project [21TYDC034]; Zhejiang Province Planted Talent Plan Project [2021R414052]; Zhejiang Provincial Department of Education [2016zb003].