Webinar Series

 

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Finance Leases and Capital Allocation Efficiency in China

The authors examine how stronger creditor protection in finance lease helps mitigate financial frictions. Utilizing transaction-level data from Chinese listed firms, they uncover several unique findings: (1) lessees (borrowers) tend to be more efficient but face greater financial constraints, while lessors (lenders) are less efficient but experience fewer financial constraints; (2) state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are more likely to act as lessors, whereas private-owned enterprises (POEs) are more likely to be lessees; (3) finance leases enable lessors to generate profits and help lessees alleviate financial frictions. A general equilibrium model with heterogeneous firms captures these empirical findings. Calibrating the model to the Chinese economy, they show that the finance lease market increases total factor productivity (TFP) by 12.71%. This improvement results from reducing both general financial frictions faced by individual firms and distortions associated with state ownership. They find that the latter effect dominates, accounting for 80% of the total TFP gain.

18
Sep
2025
Thursday

Session Chair: Zhiguo HE
James Irvin Miller Professor of Finance, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University and Senior Fellow, ABFER

10:00 am
Finance Leases and Capital Allocation Efficiency in China

Kai LI, Professor, Assistant Dean, HSBC Business School, Peking University

Co-authors:
Yuan WANG, PhD Student, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto
10:25 am
Discussion
Discussant:
Hengjie AI, Department Chair, Professor of Finance, Wisconsin School of Business, University of Wisconsin-Madison
10:50 am
Q&A
11:10 am

Updated 2 Sep 2025

Session Format

Each session lasts for 1 hour 10 minutes (25 minutes for the author, 25 minutes for the discussant and 20 minutes for participants' Q&A). Sessions will be recorded and posted on ABFER website, except in cases where speakers or discussants request us not to.

Registration

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