Cluster Commercial Credit and Total Factor Productivity of the Manufacturing Sector

The study estimates the impact of cluster commercial credit on manufacturing total factor productivity from the perspective of county-level clusters. The data were collected from 1998 to 2015 from the Chinese Industrial Enterprise Database. Various econometrics methods were used to approach the study objectives. The study found that cluster commercial credit can significantly increase the total factor productivity of manufacturing. Through the analysis of the theoretical mechanism, it was found that improving the level of innovation and improving the efficiency of the capital allocation are important ways for cluster commercial credit to positively promote the total factor productivity of the manufacturing sector. The analysis of heterogeneity found that cluster commercial credit promoted the total factor productivity of state-owned enterprises, large-scale enterprises, capital-intensive industries, high-tech industries, and enterprises in coastal areas to a great extent. By constructing a quasi-natural experiment, using the method of multi-period double difference and PSM-DID to solve the problem of cluster commercial credit endogeneity, it passed the parallel trend, placebo, and other tests. Finally, this article further describes the relationship between corporate commercial credit and corporate total factor productivity from the enterprise-to-enterprise level and found that the use of commercial credit by enterprises has a significant and positive role in promoting corporate total factor productivity. The research results of this paper provide a reference for promoting the high-quality development of the country's economy from the perspective of informal finance.