Research On The Influence Of Internet Finance On The Leverage Ratio Of Chinese Enterprises

The fifth Plenary Session of the 19 th CPC Central Committee clearly put forward the importance of financial innovation during the "14th Five-year Plan" period,which is the driving force of real economy development.Internet finance breaks the boundaries of time and space and provides a possible solution to solve the financing problems of enterprises.Relying on the Internet platform,Internet finance adopts information technology to reduce information asymmetry and service cost,which not only alleviates financing constraints of enterprises,but also avoids "one size fits all" and helps enterprises optimize leverage level in the context of high-quality economic development and deleveraging in China.In this paper,an in-depth study of the impact of Internet finance on corporate leverage ratio and its influence mechanism can help enterprises optimize financial leverage and establish internal control mechanism,which is of far-reaching significance to China’s structural deleveraging work.This paper makes a theoretical analysis of the relationship between the development of Internet Finance and the leverage ratio of enterprises,this paper holds that Internet finance can reduce the leverage ratio of enterprises by three ways: easing the financing constraints,reducing the financing cost and improving the internal control level of enterprises.Then,the development index of Internet finance is constructed by using entropy weight method from three aspects of development basis,development status and network environment to measure the development level of Internet finance in China.It is found that from 2011 to 2020,the development index of Internet finance in China shows an increasing trend year by year,rising from 13.3to 55.2,and the development status index has the largest growth rate.Secondly,the network environment index,and finally,the development foundation index.Although the leverage ratio of China’s A-share listed companies also increased during the period,there was A reverse correlation between the Internet finance development index lagging one period and the change of the leverage ratio of listed companies.Further empirical analysis shows that :(1)the development of Internet finance can effectively reduce the leverage ratio of enterprises.When the development index of Internet finance increases by 1 unit,the leverage ratio of enterprises will decrease by 0.0694 units.Among the three factors that reflect the development of network finance,network environment index has the greatest effect on enterprise deleveraging.(2)Heterogeneity analysis shows that Internet finance exerts a good deleveraging effect on enterprises in the eastern,central and western regions,but has no significant impact on enterprises in the northeast;Internet finance has reduced the leverage ratio of both state-owned and private enterprises,while the latter has the greatest effect.(3)The test of the impact mechanism proves that the three paths of influencing mechanism all have significant mediating effect,among which the reduction of enterprise financing cost has the greatest influence.Finally,based on the research conclusions,policy suggestions are put forward:strengthen Internet financial services and improve the financing environment of enterprises;According to the level of regional Internet finance,the implementation of differential development strategy;Strengthen enterprise information construction and promote digital transformation.