识不足则多虑，信不足则多言：信任与债券契约条款
学术
财经
2024-09-19 13:40
上海
识不足则多虑，信不足则多言：信任与债券契约条款
Lack of Knowledge Leads to Doubt, and Lack of Trust Leads to Words: Trust and Bond Covenants
《外国经济与管理》2024年46卷第9期 页码：48-66 online：2024年9月20日
中：邱保印1 , 曹万彬1 , 黄健军2
英：Qiu Baoyin1 , Cao Wanbin1 , Huang Jianjun2
作者单位：1.杭州电子科技大学 会计学院, 浙江 杭州 310018; 2.上海财经大学 商学院, 上海 200433
摘要：制订适当的债券契约条款是对债权人和发债人之间剩余控制权配置的一种手段。本文以2007年至2022年在A股上市发行的公司债券数据为样本，检验社会信任是否减少了企业债券契约条款使用。研究发现，社会信任可以减少公司债券中契约条款的数量，经过工具变量法（IV）、子样本双重差分法（DID）等一系列稳健性检验后结果仍然成立。机制检验表明，社会信任通过增加企业的融资能力、缓解股东和债权人之间的代理冲突，以及降低企业的道德风险水平，进而抑制企业发行债券契约条款数量。异质性分析表明，社会信任对债券契约条款的抑制作用在国有企业、高融资约束、高信息不对称和法治环境差的样本中更显著。进一步分析发现，社会信任能够减少由相互替代的契约条款和债券发行利差共同组成的债券发行成本。本文从非正式制度视角揭示企业债券发行中契约条款设置的多寡背后的动因，为我国债券市场健康发展提出新的解释。
关键词：债券契约条款；社会信任；交易费用；债券发行成本
Summary: Formulating appropriate bond covenants is a means of allocating residual control between creditors and issuers. This paper takes the data of corporate bonds listed and issued on the A-share market from 2007 to 2022 as a sample to test whether social trust reduces the use of corporate bond covenants. The results show that social trust can reduce the number of covenants in corporate bonds, and the results are still valid after a series of robust tests such as the IV method and subsample DID method. Mechanism testing shows that social trust can inhibit the number of bond covenants by increasing their financing ability, alleviating the agency conflict between shareholders and creditors, and reducing the moral hazard of enterprises. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the inhibitory effect of social trust on bond covenants is more significant in the samples of state-owned enterprises, higher financing constraints, higher information asymmetry, and lower legal environment. Further analysis shows that social trust can reduce bond issuance costs, a mutual substitution that is composed of covenants and issuance spreads. This paper reveals the motivation behind the number of covenants in corporate bond issuance from the perspective of informal institutions, and proposes a new explanation for the healthy development of China’s bond market.
Key words:bond covenants; social trust; transaction costs; bond issuance costs
DOI：10.16538/j.cnki.fem.20240524.202
收稿日期：2023-11-28
基金项目：国家社科基金后期资助项目（20FGLB062）；杭州电子科技大学研究生科研创新基金资助项目（CXJJ2023154）
