Professor Cao Tingqiu’s Research Published in Journal of Financial Research

Recently, the research paper Research on the Credit Guiding Effect of Government White Lists by Professor Cao Tingqiu and doctoral student Pang Nianwei from the School of Economics at Shandong University was published in Issue 6, 2025 of Journal of Financial Research. This paper is an achievement of the construction of the fiscal and finance discipline direction of economics with Chinese characteristics in the School of Economics.

Information asymmetry is the main reason for the difficulty and high cost of financing for small and medium-sized enterprises, especially technology-based small and medium-sized enterprises, and also a major challenge for improving the efficiency of credit resource allocation. In recent years, government information empowerment has become an important means to solve information asymmetry. Government departments have increased the disclosure of enterprise-related information, enabling banks to accurately obtain industrial and commercial, tax and other information of loan enterprises and improve banks' ability to judge enterprise operation status. However, relevant research mainly focuses on mirror-type information, and research on government certification-type information still needs to be enriched.

Taking the "Specialized, Sophisticated, Unique, and New" white list as a representative of government certification-type information, this paper studies its guiding effect and mechanism on enterprise loans. The study finds that the government white list has a significant credit guiding effect: it helps banks and enterprises without previous loan relationships to establish credit relationships, playing a role on the extensive margin; it enables banks to increase credit supply to existing customers and reduce interest rates for existing customers, playing a role on the intensive margin. Mechanism analysis finds that the white list improves banks' pre-loan risk identification ability and alleviates adverse selection problems.

This study innovatively analyzes the economic effects of certification-type information from dual perspectives of extensive margin and intensive margin, expands the research dimension of government information affecting the credit market, makes up for the deficiency of existing research mainly focusing on mirror-type information, and has certain practical significance for optimizing the macroeconomic governance system and improving the efficiency of credit resource allocation.

Cao Tingqiu is a professor at the School of Economics at Shandong University. He has long been engaged in research on bank governance, monetary policy, and financial risks, and has published more than 100 papers in journals such as Social Sciences in China, Economic Research Journal, International Review of Finance, and Corporate Governance: An International Review.