关键词: 非金融企业, 影子银行, 金融风险

Abstract: Since China’s economy entered the new normal, economic growth has slowed down. With the structural imbalance between the development of the real economy and that of the virtual economy, the long-term problems of financial repression, hard credit constraints and credit discrimination in the process of China’s economic development, more and more enterprises with financing advantages have been investing resources originally used for operational business in financial assets to chase high investment returns, actively acting as credit intermediaries, providing funds to small and medium-sized enterprises and non-listed private enterprises with high financing constraints through various ways such as entrusted loans, entrusted wealth management, private lending and the purchase of various shadow credit products.
As a new form of shadow banking, non-financial enterprises engaging in shadow banking business will affect the investment in the real economy and lead to the economy “from real to virtual”. In addition, the participation of non-financial enterprises in shadow banking activities is actually a kind of lending activity with high risk, strong concealability and certain characteristics of regulatory arbitrage. What’s more, due to the cross-market, cross-institution and cross-asset operation characteristics of business, the relevance of the system is greatly enhanced, and the contagiousness of risks between different markets and institutions is enhanced, which is easy to lead to the accumulation of financial risk. Ultimately, it affects the stability of the financial system. Grasping the dialectical relationship between the “virtual” and “real” of non-financial enterprises, promoting the coordinated development of their real and financial investment, and preventing and resolving the financial risk caused by the excessive scale of their shadow banking are important parts of maintaining financial stability.
This paper collects the provincial and firm-level data from 2008 to 2019 from the CSMAR and Wind Database. First, based on the provincial level data, this paper introduces the TOPSIS-grey correlation analysis method based on “vertical” distance optimization to construct a dynamic financial risk stress index to measure financial risk. This model can comprehensively and meticulously measure the financial risk level of different regions at multiple points and the overall risk level within the point time, providing a new measurement method for financial risk. Second, based on firm-level data, this paper uses entrusted loans, entrusted wealth management, the purchase of various shadow credit products and private lending to refer to the shadow banking business of non-financial listed companies. The proportion of shadow banking business in total assets is used to measure the scale of shadow banking business. Third, based on the provincial panel data from 2008 to 2019, this paper examines the impact of shadow banking business of non-financial enterprises on financial risk. The findings suggest that the shadow banking business of non-financial firms increases the financial risk and remain robust when endogeneity and regional spillover effects are taken into account. Fourth, this paper deeply analyzes the internal correlation characteristics between shadow banking of non-financial enterprises and financial risks. The results of the channel analysis suggest that shadow banking of non-financial firms pushes up asset prices in an economic boom and reduces overall social liquidity in an economic downturn, thereby increasing financial risk. Besides, shadow banking of non-financial enterprises can reduce real investment and lead to increased financial risk. Fifth, this paper examines the heterogeneous impact of shadow banking of non-financial enterprises on financial risks at the level of business type and region. The results of heterogeneity analysis show that non-financial enterprises engaging in entrusted wealth management business is the main reason for increasing financial risk, and the impact of engaging in entrusted loans, private lending and other shadow banking business on financial risk is not significant; the effect of shadow banking of non-financial enterprises on financial risk is significant only in the central and western regions. The research in this paper has strong policy implications for the prevention and resolution of major financial risk.

Key words: non-financial firms, shadow banking, financial risk