Corporate Strategic Aggressiveness, Credit Cycle and Debt Default

Abstract

In recent years, corporate debt default events occur frequently and accelerate in China. The debt default entities have gradually spread to state-owned enterprises, urban investment platforms, and listed companies. Constrained by the indirect mode of financing, commercial banks’ non-performing loan ratio is rising and their risk exposure is expanding in China. The continuous outbreak of debt default events and the continuous rise of bank non-performing loan ratios reflect the persistence of debt default in a period of time in China, which accumulating systemic risks in the financial sector through chain reactions, and even triggering financial crisis. Therefore, corporate debt default has become one of the major risks faced by China currently. It can not only help companies prevent and control debt default risks, but also help the financial sector better control macro financial risks to explore the main influencing factors of corporate debt default.The existing literature mainly studies the influencing factors of corporate debt default from the perspective of strategic differences. This paper combines with the reality of Chinese enterprises, re-examines the strategy from the perspective of three-dimensional balance of growth, profitability and risk, and explores the influence mechanism of enterprise strategic aggressiveness on debt default. By constructing a moderated mediating effect model, this paper puts credit cycle, which is an important factor affecting the external financing environment of enterprises, into the research framework, and further explores the moderating effect of credit cycle on the above two relationships. The results show that: Strategic aggressiveness is the main inducement of debt default; strategic aggressiveness can increase corporate default risks by negatively affecting investment efficiency, and also by positively affecting asset financial debt ratio（short-term loans for long-term investment）; credit tightening（easing）boosts（eases）the possibility of debt default for strategic aggressive enterprises, which will also indirectly adjust the impact of strategic aggressiveness on debt default by negatively affecting the relationship between investment efficiency and debt default, and also by negatively affecting the relationship between asset financial debt ratio（short-term loan for long-term investment）and debt default.On the basis of redefining the concept of strategic aggressiveness, this paper constructs the measurement index to provide theoretical support for the follow-up empirical research of strategic aggressiveness. It is helpful for managers to deepen the theoretical understanding to the influencing factors of corporate debt default and the mechanism of strategic aggressiveness, fully consider the supporting ability of their own funds to the implementation of the strategy when formulating corporate strategy, and avoid adopting radical financing strategies that rely excessively on financial liabilities or even short-term loans for long-term investments. It is also useful to provide theoretical support for the financial sector to understand the effect of credit policy implementation and better control macro financial risks. In response to the structural high-leverage problem faced by China at the present stage, avoiding the excessive deleveraging policy, the government should adopt the policy of deleveraging step by step, so as to help enterprises pass the top area of credit cycle smoothly.