Financial distress and innovation: Evidence from the Enterprise Bankruptcy Law
YANG Jialun1, WANG Yintian2
1. Department of Finance, Shanghai National Accounting Institute, Shanghai 201702, China; 2. Department of Finance, School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Abstract：[Objective] Traditional social concepts still hold certain negative views and stereotypes about bankruptcy. After the implementation of the Enterprise Bankruptcy Law in China in 2007, the positive role of the bankruptcy system and the impact of creditor protection are still not fairly understood. Until now, no literature has systematically analyzed and studied the effect of the Enterprise Bankruptcy Law on the innovative behavior of enterprises in financial distress. In fact, only a few quantitative analyses of the economic effects of implementing the Enterprise Bankruptcy Law have been found. This study examines the impact of the Enterprise Bankruptcy Law implementation on firm innovation and finds an increase in patent activity for firms in financial distress following the implementation of the law, thereby filling a gap in the literature on law and finance. [Methods] The 2007 Enterprise Bankruptcy Law is used as a quasi-natural experiment to construct a difference-in-difference model, as the model is intended to net out the common trend between the treatment and control firm groups. This study takes Merton's option pricing theory as the theoretical foundation of the credit monitor model and gauges the degree of financial distress faced by enterprises by calculating their distance to default. Based on the financial distress level faced by sample firms in 2006, the year before implementing the Bankruptcy Law, the firms are grouped by the annual median level of financial distress. However, firms with high financial distress typically differ from those with low financial distress in terms of other company characteristics, which could lead to concerns about missing variables. This paper introduces a propensity score matching method based on the difference model and selects four firms in the control group that belong to the same industry and have the closest propensity scores to those in the treatment group to effectively eliminate this concern. The estimation of the trend-matching scoring is performed using logical regression, and the sample set has passed the balance test. Furthermore, multistage dynamic regressions are employed to account for the interference of causal issues with the results. In addition, a volatility indicator based on the three-factor model is used to assess a firm's risk bearing to study the channel through which the Enterprise Bankruptcy Law influences firm innovation. [Results] After the implementation of the Enterprise Bankruptcy Law, the results revealed the following: 1) The number of patent applications of the experiment group increased by 18.77%, and the number of invention patent applications increased by 25.86% compared with the control group. 2) The implementation of the Enterprise Bankruptcy Law has strengthened the protection of creditors and thus improved the level of firm risk bearing, which has significantly increased innovation output and innovation quality of financially-distressed firms. 3)The above phenomena are more pronounced in firms with good corporate governance in regions with strict rules of law and strong intellectual property protection. [Conclusions] This study confirms the effect of creditor protection on business innovation. The introduction of the Enterprise Bankruptcy Law has enhanced the legitimate rights and interests of creditors in China, provided a strong guarantee for creditors to obtain potential repayment, enhanced the risk tolerance of firms, and encouraged firms to innovate. This study reveals the far-reaching effects of the legal system on the real economy and expands our knowledge of how the legal system environment influences enterprise innovation.
杨伽伦, 王茵田. 财务困境与创新—来自《破产法》的证据[J]. 清华大学学报（自然科学版）, 2023, 63(9): 1452-1466.
YANG Jialun, WANG Yintian. Financial distress and innovation: Evidence from the Enterprise Bankruptcy Law. Journal of Tsinghua University(Science and Technology), 2023, 63(9): 1452-1466.
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2023, Vol. 63 
