Fintech and corporate leverage manipulation: A new explanation from the perspective of capital demands

Ruoyu Zhu, Kehu Tan, Xiaohui Xin and Qipo Wang

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, 2025, vol. 46, issue C

Abstract: Leverage manipulation refers to fraudulent behavior in which a firm deliberately lowers its book leverage through various accounting techniques to achieve a variety of objectives. However, in the era of rapid growth of fintech, can it curb this fraudulent behavior? To answer this question, we investigate the impact of fintech on corporate leverage manipulation from the perspective of capital demands. We find that fintech can inhibit corporate leverage manipulation. Mechanism analysis demonstrates that fintech weakens firms’ incentives to manipulate leverage by lowering firms’ unreasonable excessive capital demands arising from inefficient investments and the satisfaction of management’s desires. Furthermore, the inhibiting effect of fintech on corporate leverage manipulation is more pronounced in firms with high financing constraints and in tech-industries. We shed light on the latent mechanism between fintech and corporate leverage manipulation.

Keywords: Fintech; Corporate leverage manipulation; Capital demands (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221463502500036X

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:eee:beexfi:v:46:y:2025:i:c:s221463502500036x

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbef.2025.101055

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance is currently edited by Michael Dowling and Jürgen Huber

More articles in Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().