| 赵仁杰,张子尧,张文文.社会保险统筹改革与中小企业信贷融资[J].数量经济技术经济研究,2025,(11):199-220 | | 社会保险统筹改革与中小企业信贷融资 | | Pension Pooling Reform and SMEs Credit Financing | | | | DOI： | | 中文关键词: 养老金统筹 信贷干预 中小企业融资 | | 英文关键词: Pension Pooling Reform Credit Intervention SMEs Financing | | 基金项目: | | | 中文摘要: | | 党的二十届三中全会强调要完善民营企业融资支持政策制度，破解融资难、融资贵问题。本文基于信贷挤出视角，利用双重差分法和全国税收调查数据研究了社会保险统筹改革对中小企业融资的影响。研究发现，养老保险统筹层次提升能够有效改善中小企业的银行借款能力，降低其信贷融资成本，对缓解中小企业融资难、融资贵产生了积极作用。机制分析显示，养老保险统筹改革减少了地方政府发行债券和扶持低效企业对中小企业信贷资源的挤占，改善了地方性金融机构对中小企业的信贷支持。异质性分析表明，养老保险统筹对中小企业融资的正向作用主要体现在民营企业上，并且改革前地区受扶持企业越多、银行业竞争程度越大，养老保险统筹对中小企业融资的积极影响越明显。本文不仅揭示了地方政府与商业银行在信贷市场上的互利机制对中小企业融资的影响，还有助于从地方利益角度理解社保基金全国统筹的制约因素，对加快社会保险基金统筹改革促进信贷资源配置和中小企业发展具有重要启示。 | | 英文摘要: | | Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are a vital force in the development of the economy and society. However, for a long time, difficulties in obtaining loans and high borrowing costs have been major factors restricting the growth of SMEs, and this issue is prevalent worldwide. In China, local governments indirectly intervene in commercial bank credit allocation by controlling fiscal funds, surplus social insurance funds, and other deposit resources, leading to a crowding-out effect on SMEs’ access to credit. This study investigates the profound impact of social insurance system reform on the financing environment of SMEs in China—a critical issue for sustainable economic growth. While conventional wisdom attributes SMEs’ financing constraints to market frictions, such as information asymmetry and a lack of collateral, we argue that a deeper, structural impediment lies within the governance of China’s vast social security funds. Under the prevailing system of territorial management, local governments control trillions of RMB in social security surplus funds. Although these funds cannot be used for fiscal expenditure, they are typically deposited into commercial banks at low interest rates, creating a powerful, yet implicit, bargaining chip. This arrangement fosters a “government–bank quid pro quo” where local governments leverage their control over these substantial and stable deposits to influence bank lending decisions, often directing credit toward state-favored projects or inefficient enterprises. Consequently, this practice crowds out credit access for more productive yet less politically connected SMEs, thereby exacerbating their “financing difficulties and high financing costs”.This study constructs a theoretical model to describe the relationship between bank lending behavior and the local government’s right to manage the balance of social security funds. The basic idea of the model is that if local governments have the management rights over the balance of social security funds at their own level, banks will cooperate with local governments’ credit intervention behaviors to obtain social security fund balances, mainly manifested as purchasing government bonds and providing loans or subsidies to specific enterprises. As the total amount of credit funds available to local financial institutions is fixed, it squeezes out the credit resources that SMEs can obtain. To empirically test this hypothesis, we exploit the staggered implementation of the provincial-level pooling reform of the basic pension insurance system as a quasi-natural experiment. This reform centralized the management of pension funds from the municipal/county level to the provincial level, effectively stripping lower-level governments of their ability to use these funds as a tool for credit market intervention. Using a comprehensive firm-level panel data set from the Annual Survey of Tax Information of China from 2007 to 2015, we employ a difference-in-differences model.Our findings are robust and compelling. First, two indicators, namely, the bank borrowing ratio and the proportion of interest expenses, are used as the explained variables to measure the financing difficulties and high financing costs of SMEs, respectively. We find that the social insurance pooling reform significantly enhanced SMEs’ access to bank loans and markedly reduced their credit financing costs. The economic magnitude of this effect is substantial, and the dynamic effect analysis reveals that the reform effects exhibit a continuously strengthening trend not caused by short-term market fluctuations. The mechanism analysis reveals that the reform operates primarily by weakening local governments’ capacity for credit intervention. Specifically, we demonstrate that the reform led to a reduction in local government debt issuance (e.g., via local government financing vehicles) and curbed credit flows to specific, less-efficient state-supported firms. By mitigating this credit crowding-out, the reform freed up financial resources, which were then redirected to the SME sector.Furthermore, heterogeneity analysis demonstrates that the positive financing effects of the reform are significantly more pronounced for private enterprises compared with state-owned enterprises, which typically face more severe discrimination in credit markets, and for firms located in regions with a higher degree of banking competition. This implies that market forces, when less distorted by government intervention, can amplify the benefits of the reform.This study contributes to the literature by identifying a novel and powerful channel through which public finance governance impacts corporate finance and real economic activities. The results have the following crucial policy implications: First, accelerating the national pooling of all social insurance funds is not merely a matter of social welfare sustainability but a vital strategic tool to optimize financial resource allocation. Second, by severing the link between social security fund management and local credit intervention, policymakers can foster a more equitable and efficient financial system that better supports the vital SMEs sector, thereby promoting high-quality and inclusive economic growth. | | 查看全文 相关附件： 下载数据代码附录 |
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