数字技术与经济金融前沿论坛（第55期）

摘要：

International business research has long examined how legal institutions shape corporate strategy, yet it often emphasizes statutory (de jure) rules rather than their practical application. We extend this literature by investigating de facto debt enforcement, the effectiveness of “law in action,” as a critical determinant of corporate debt structure. Using a dataset of firms from 57 countries over the 2001–2024 period, we find that stronger enforcement is associated with lower debt concentration. This association is concentrated in developing and emerging economies and is statistically indistinguishable from zero in advanced economies, consistent with enforcement being a binding constraint in institutional voids. Mechanism tests suggest two channels: enforcement increases the pledgeability of tangible assets and the use of secured debt, and it improves access to cross-border syndicated lending by increasing the likelihood of a foreign lead bank. To mitigate endogeneity concerns, we exploit the 2005 Brazilian bankruptcy reform as a quasi-natural experiment, confirming that a negative shock to enforcement leads to increased debt concentration. Overall, the findings underscore that de facto enforcement, beyond de jure rules, is a binding institutional constraint on corporate financing, particularly in emerging economies.

主讲人介绍：

张海博士目前担任英国斯克莱德商学院（英国top 10 商学院）会计金融系副教授、博导。 张海在英国格拉斯哥大学取得量化金融博士，博士研究由经济与社会研究议会（Economicand Social Research Council，ESRC）全额资助，在其读博期间，他获得资助成为美国哥伦比亚大学（Columbia University）研究学者。 张海博士的主要研究领域包括不完备金融市场创新以及其对中小型企业投融资的影响，其主要研究成果被国际主流金融、经济学杂志发表，如经济研究，Journal of Corporate Finance, European Journal of Operational Research, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, The European Journal of Finance and European Financial Management, 等等。