Impacts of the financialization of manufacturing enterprises on total factor productivity: empirical examination from China’s listed companies

Abstract

This paper examines the effects and mechanism of the financialization of manufacturing enterprises on total factor productivity (TFP). Thus, it provides evidence of the economic consequences of corporate financialization from the perspective of productivity. Using the panel data of China’s listed manufacturing companies from 2007 to 2018, the level of corporate financialization is measured using the proportion of financial assets in the total assets. The results show that the deepening of the financialization of manufacturing enterprises significantly reduces TFP and the magnitude of the impacts of different types of financial assets variates. In addition, the effects of corporate financialization on TFP are heterogeneous in terms of their significance and degrees in different types of enterprises as well as in different levels of enterprises’ TFP. The further analysis of the influencing mechanism shows that corporate financialization has different effects on the TFP of manufacturing enterprises through technological innovation and resource allocation efficiency.