Research On The Influence Of Corporate Strategic Deviation On Leverage Manipulation

In 2008,China started a large-scale economic stimulus plan,which promoted the macro leverage ratio to continue to rise.In this context,the central government began to focus on promoting deleveraging policies with the primary goal of preventing systemic financial risks in 2015.A series of policy evolutions are a vivid interpretation of the government’s growing understanding of the domestic high-leverage problem and the increasingly precise deleveraging measures under the determination to deleverage.However,due to the difficulty of achieving substantial deleveraging,in reality,enterprises will adopt a variety of means to carry out leverage manipulation,resulting in greater risk of debt default or even bankruptcy.Some scholars have analyzed the influencing factors of corporate leverage manipulation from micro and macro perspectives,and the specific behavior of enterprises is mostly endogenous to corporate strategy,and strategic positioning determines the resource allocation mode of all aspects of enterprises,affects the behavior decisions of enterprises,and is a deeper factor affecting leverage manipulation.So,does corporate strategic deviance affect leverage manipulation? This issue urgently requires further research in the academic community.Through the combing of relevant domestic and foreign literature,this paper puts forward hypotheses based on theoretical analysis,and constructs corresponding empirical models for hypotheses.Specifically,from 2007 to 2021,A-share nonfinancial listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen were used as research objects to empirically explore the mechanism of corporate strategic deviance on leverage manipulation,and the moderating role of internal control and stable institutional investors in this process.Studies show that,first,the higher the degree of strategic deviance,the higher the degree of corporate leverage manipulation;Second,internal control negatively regulates the positive relationship between corporate strategic deviance and leverage manipulation by reducing the path of information asymmetry and operational risk.Third,compared with transactional institutional investors,stable institutional investors have more willingness and ability to participate in corporate governance,and by playing an external governance role,negatively adjust the positive relationship between strategic deviance and corporate leverage manipulation.The findings are still reliable after a series of robustness tests such as propensity score matching,instrumental variable method,and further control of variables preferred by management to solve the endogenous problem,variable substitution,change of regression intervals of study samples,fixed-effect model,and Tobit interception model.Further research shows that financing constraints provide motivation for corporate leverage manipulation,which is an important mechanism for corporate strategic deviance to act on leverage manipulation,and after the short-term debt repayment pressure of enterprises is higher,the positive impact of corporate strategic deviance on leverage manipulation is greater.The study enriches the literature on leverage manipulation,serves empirical evidence for the economic consequences of corporate strategic deviance,and has important reference significance for relevant government departments to accurately implement deleveraging policies,and can also provide reference for external investors’ decision-making,which has strong practical significance.