环境司法改革与企业杠杆操纵:来自环境法庭设立的证据OA

Although the original intention of environmental judicial reform is to strengthen environmental governance by applying the concept of environmental rule of law,it may also send potential risk signals to stakeholders,thereby potentially leading to distorted corporate behavior.Taking the establishment of environmental courts as an exogenous shock,this paper systematically examines the impact of environmental judicial reform on corporate leverage manipulation using data from heavily polluting companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share markets from 2004 to 2023,employing a multi-period difference-in-differences approach.The results show that the establishment of environmental courts significantly exacerbates corporate leverage manipulation,with the core mechanism being the intensification of environmental homogeneity pressure and the emergence of debt financing disadvantages.Heterogeneity analysis indicates that this exacerbating effect is more pronounced when companies face higher environmental risks or have fewer collateralizable assets.Governance mechanism analysis reveals that this effect is mitigated when green subsidies are relatively sufficient,green finance is relatively well-developed,and corporate governance quality is relatively sound.Economic consequence analysis further shows that this effect significantly increases corporate debt default risk and stock price crash risk.Spillover effect analysis confirms that this effect exhibits spatial spillovers,meaning that the establishment of environmental courts in neighboring regions also exacerbates local corporate leverage manipulation behavior.These findings reveal the unintended consequences of environmental judicial reform from the perspective of corporate leverage manipulation,providing theoretical support and practical insights for judicial authorities to optimize environmental judicial reforms,prevent systemic financial risks,and for enterprises to improve their debt decisions to control implicit debt risks.