Can the Opening of High-Speed Railway Restrain Corporate Financialization?

Ruo-Yu Zhu (), Ke-Hu Tan and Xiao-Hui Xin
Additional contact information
Ruo-Yu Zhu: School of Economics and Management, Beijing Jiao Tong University, Beijing 100044, China
Ke-Hu Tan: School of Economics and Management, Beijing Jiao Tong University, Beijing 100044, China
Xiao-Hui Xin: School of Economics and Management, Beijing Jiao Tong University, Beijing 100044, China

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 6, 1-23

Abstract: Under the background of the economy “shifting from real to virtual”, how to guide real enterprises to return to their main businesses has become an urgent problem to be solved in the stage of microeconomic bodies moving toward high-quality development. Based on the perspective of the opening of high-speed railway (HSR), this paper builds a time-varying DID model to systematically test the relationship between HSR and corporate financialization by matching the data of HSR among 286 cities in China with the data of A-share non-financial companies listed in the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets. The results showed that there is a significant negative correlation between HSR and corporate financialization, i.e., the opening of HSR can significantly inhibit corporate financialization. This conclusion still holds after a series of robustness tests. Mechanism analysis found that the opening of HSR can restrain corporate financialization through “crowding-out effects” and “liquidity replenishment effects”. Heterogeneity analysis showed that the inhibitory effect of HSR on corporate financialization is more significant in large enterprises, fiercely competitive industries, and cities with high initial transportation resources. This paper deeply explored the relationship between the opening of HSR and corporate financialization, which not only enriches the existing literature but also provides a useful reference for guiding real enterprises to actively return to their main businesses.

Keywords: opening of high-speed railway; corporate financialization; shifting from real to virtual; crowding-out effects; liquidity replenishment effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/6/4807/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/6/4807/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:6:p:4807-:d:1091409

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().