Will The Mandatory Dividend Policy Weaken The Company's Debt Financing Ability?

For a long time,China's capital market has been "heavy financing,light return" characteristics,resulting in the phenomenon of iron rooster is common.In order to improve this situation,the Chinese government has successively introduced a series of related dividend policies,among which the mandatory dividend policy proposed by guo shuqing,chairman of China securities regulatory commission(CSRC)before 2011 has the most significant effect,that is,the listed companies are required to pay dividends to investors according to their promises,and the non-dividend companies are punished.Since then,the government's method of moral exhortation has been carried forward by successive CSRC chairmen.At this point,China's dividend policy gradually from the semi-mandatory to the mandatory change,its impact is also more and more powerful.However,with the gradual advance of compulsory dividend policy,will the debt financing ability of listed companies be weakened? In view of the existing research literature,few scholars have studied the effect of compulsory dividend policy on the debt financing ability of listed companies against the background of its implementation.Therefore,in order to deeply and comprehensively explore this research topic,this paper will step by step from the three dimensions of asset-liability ratio,debt maturity structure and credit financing ability to deeply study the impact of compulsory dividend policy on corporate debt financing ability.Therefore,this paper not only carried out theoretical verification in the optimization model under a constraint,but also carried out empirical test using the dual difference model based on the basic data of China's non-financial listed companies from 2007 to 2017.The test results show that: first of all,from the dimension of measuring the overall debt financing ability of a company--the asset-liability ratio index,it can be seen that the mandatory dividend policy can significantly reduce the asset-liability ratio of a company,thus weakening its overall debt financing ability.Furthermore,according to the heterogeneity analysis of company size and equity concentration,it is found that compulsory dividend policy can significantly reduce the debt financing ability of large or low equity concentration companies.In this policy effect,financial index z-value plays a completely mediating effect.Secondly,from the perspective of debt maturity structure,compulsory dividend policy will worsen the debt maturity structure of the company and weaken its debt financing ability.At the same time,from the results of heterogeneity analysis,it can be seen that this policy effect is very obvious for companies with small size or high ownership concentration.In this policy effect,the equity multiplier plays a part in the mediating effect.Finally,from the perspective of credit financing ability,which reflects the real debt financing ability of the company,compulsory dividend policy will effectively improve the credit financing ability of the company.This policy effect is particularly significant for low ownership concentration or state-owned enterprises.