By Bo Li (Tsinghua University – PBC School of Finance) and Jacopo Ponticelli (Kellogg School of Management – Department of Finance)
In the last decade, China experienced a massive increase in corporate debt and, more recently, in corporate bankruptcies. Despite the mounting pressure on its insolvency resolution system, little is known about how bankruptcy works in China and the role played by the government.
China’s bankruptcy system experienced two recent changes: the reform of the bankruptcy code in 2007, and the introduction of specialized courts between 2007 and 2017. Before the introduction of specialized courts, bankruptcy cases were filed in local civil courts. Characterized by limited expertise and long delays, local courts tend to operate under the influence of local politicians, who have strong incentives to keep financially distressed state-owned companies alive to reduce unemployment and boost their political career. Thus, even though the 2007 reform aligned Chinese bankruptcy law with those in the US and Europe, timely resolution of state-owned firms in financial distress remains a problem due to the influence of local governments.
Recently, China’s central government promoted the introduction of courts specialized in bankruptcy, which are modeled on US courts and run by insolvency professionals. In this paper, we study the impact of the introduction of specialized courts across Chinese provinces a on bankruptcy resolution and credit markets. The introduction of specialized courts led to an increase in the share of liquidations of state-owned firms and a faster speed of processing in court. In addition, state-owned firms operating in jurisdictions with specialized courts experienced a decrease in the size of new bank loans, lower access to new loans, and lower investment in physical capital relative to privately-owned firms.
The full article is available here.