Research On The Influence Of Bank Lending Standards On Accounting Conservatism Of Listed Enterprises

Since the outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2008,Chinese banks’ lending standards have generally tended to tighten.Faced with the increasing uncertainty of credit risks in the "post-crisis" period,commercial banks began to take a cautious attitude of lending,and it has become more difficult for enterprises to obtain financing.From the perspective of commercial banks,the solvency of enterprises will be vital evidence for banks to judge whether to lend in the process of bank loan approval,and accounting information can embody this ability.Thereinto,accounting conservatism is a crucial target to accurately evaluate the quality of accounting information.Banks will pay attention to the accounting conservatism of enterprises when approving loans for purpose of minishing credit risk.From the perspective of enterprises,bank lending standards is not only the "indicator" of loan availability,but also determines the loan interest rates and quotas,which directly affect the financing cost of enterprises.Therefore,it is also the most concerned bank indicators for financial management of enterprises.Then,from the perspective of capital provider advantages,do bank lending standards have an impact on corporate accounting conservatism? Clarifying the connection between the two will not only help ease the information asymmetry between commercial banks and enterprises,minish the credit risk faced by commercial banks,but also help high-quality enterprises to obtain more loan support for their business activities and accelerate the progress of the real economy.This paper uses the bank lending index in the questionnaire report of the People’s Bank of China to quantitative the tightness of bank lending standards,selection of earnings and stock returns of measurement to measure accounting conservatism.And combined with the data of Chinese listed enterprises,this paper constructs an unbalanced panel data model to test the relationship between the two,analyzes the impact of bank lending standards on corporate accounting conservatism.And the robustness of regression results is tested by means of alternative explanatory variables,alternative research model,propensity score matching method(PSM)and instrumental variable method.Then,this paper further explores the heterogeneous impact of corporate property rights and senior executives’ working backgrounds on the concern between bank lending standards and accounting conservatism.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows:(1)Bank lending standards are significantly negatively correlated with corporate accounting conservatism.When bank lending standards are tightened,commercial banks are less willing to lend,and enterprises adopt higher accounting conservatism in order to improve the availability of loans.This indicates that enterprises have higher accounting information quality and commercial banks face less credit risk when issuing loans to them.(2)State-owned enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises have different performance on accounting conservatism.In the face of the tightening of bank lending standards,state-owned enterprises have a greater degree of accounting conservatism.(3)The banking background of senior executives can affect the accounting conservatism of enterprises.The accounting conservatism of senior executives with banking background is weaker.According to the conclusions of this paper,commercial banks should control the lending standards to be relatively strict within a reasonable range,forcing enterprises to upgrade the accounting conservatism and the quality of accounting information,so as to effectively reduce credit risk.And in order to enhance the availability of loan funds,enterprises should lay emphasis on the quality of accounting information in their daily business management.