Recently, a paper entitled Development Zones, Participation in Supply Chains and Firms' Financial Constraints finished by Bian Zeyang as the first author was officially published in the Top Tier journal《Economic Research Journal》 in issue 10, 2021. This paper was published with the Business School of USST as the first agency, Bian Zeyang as the first author and Professor Li Zhiyuan at Fudan University as the corresponding author. 《Economic Research Journal》 is a TOP A journal of Business School, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology.
This paper focuses on the important policy issues faced by the central and local governments concerning how to alleviate the financial constraints of Chinese firms, by proposing and estimating the contribution of supply chain participation to alleviating firms’ financial constraints. Specifically, under the background of national development zones, this paper constructs an exogenous shock by exploiting the government's policy preference for leading industries of development zones, and investigates whether this exogenous shock mitigates the financial constraints of upstream and downstream firms of leading industries through supply chain linkages with ASIF data in 1998-2007 and listed company data in 2000-2019. It shows that the positive shock on the leading industries effectively alleviates the credit constraints of upstream and downstream firms of leading industries. The mitigation of financial constraints of upstream firms accounts for about 12.5% of cash flow, and the mitigation of financial constraints of downstream firms accounts for about 8.5% of cash flow. On the one hand, this study provides a supply chain based idea for the central and local governments to formulate policies to alleviate the difficulty and expensiveness of firms’ financing. On the other hand, it provides an explanation from the perspective of financial constraints for understanding the micro mechanism of the impact of development zone policy on firms.
In September 2020, this paper participated in the third China Urban Economists Forum (2020) organized by 《Economic Research Journal》, and was voted as a distinguished paper of the forum by a handsome majority. Thereafter, it directly entered the anonymous review process of the journal. In December 2020, this paper was awarded the 15th Shanghai Economist Association Prize for Outstanding Achievement of Young Economist by the Development Research Center of Shanghai Municipal People's Government, and Mr. Bian Zeyang was invited to attend the award ceremony and deliver a keynote speech.
In recent years, Business School of USSThas been firmly advocating Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era and the spirit of the important speech of president Xi Jinping Write Papers on the earth of Motherland.Also, Business School has been promoting the implementation of “Talent First” strategy, advancing the quantity and quality of staff training and talents introduction, strengthening the construction of research platforms,creating a rich academic atmosphere,and continuously producing high-quality academic achievements.
《Economic Research Journal》, founded in 1955, is a national comprehensive economic theory journal, sponsored by the Institute of Economics of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and supervised by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. It is broadly recognized as the Top One journal of economics by all the universities and research institutions across China.
Contributor: BIAN Zeyang
