Does Transportation Time Affect Corporate Financialization----Based on the Quasi-natural Experiment on High-Speed Railway Opening

Abstract

Objectives: The construction of high-speed railway (HSR) in China has developed rapidly in recent years, and the opening of high-speed railway has had a significant impact on the economic development of the region and has profoundly affected the development of regional enterprises. Based on the data of Chinese A-share listed companies from year 2004 to 2017, this paper examines whether the opening of high-speed railway has an impact on the degree of financialization of corporates. The results show that the opening of high-speed railway significantly boosts the financialization level of enterprises, and this effect is most obvious two years after the opening of high-speed railway, with significant regional heterogeneity and corporate ownership heterogeneity, and mainly occurs in high financing constrained enterprises and low technology enterprises. Finally, the paper proposes corresponding countermeasures in response to the research findings.