Based on the financial data for Chinese A-share companies listed in the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges and the corporate social responsibility (CSR) score data published in the Hexun website‡from 2010 to 2019, we carried out an empirical study and found that CSR fulfilment helps to restrain debt risk faced by firms, and that product-market competition can promote the inhibitory effect of CSR fulfilment on debt risk. The further study found that CSR fulfilment of monetary capital layer and human capital layer on debt risk will be significantly stronger than that of social capital layer.

We examine whether and how interest rate liberalization affects firm leverage in China. We find that interest rate liberalization exerts a negative effect on the leverage of firms. Specifically, firms experience a reduction in total leverage during the liberalization period, and firms’ short-term leverage declines more relative to long-term leverage. Mechanism analysis shows that firms with high information asymmetry enjoy more decline in leverage relative to firms with low information asymmetry, and further, liberalization policy enables the reduction in credit transaction costs, which indicates that the behavior of banks actively collecting corporate information is an important channel that interest rate liberalization impacts firm leverage. Finally, in additional tests, we find that the impact is more salient when firms are non-state-owned, and loss making. Compare to operating liabilities, firms experience more reduction in financial liability.

This paper takes the degree of debt concentration and product market competitive advantage as intermediary variables to explore the internal mechanism of the impact of CSR fulfilment on firm debt risk. It is found that the fulfilment of CSR can reduce the debt risk of firms by dispersing the degree of debt concentration and enhancing the competitive advantage of product market. The mediating effect of the degree of debt concentration has a direct impact on the competitive advantage of a product market and is particularly obvious in private firms and firms in the eastern region of China.