We examine whether public credit disclosure changes the organization of firms’ bank borrowing. Using exchange-filed bank-borrowing announcements of Chinese A-share listed firms from 2013 to 2024, we exploit the 2017 nationwide completion of China’s public credit disclosure system in an intensity-DID design based on pre-policy firm size. More exposed firms increase their multi-bank loan ratio by 1.8 percentage points, about 14% of the sample mean. Dynamic estimates show no differential pre-trends, and the result remains robust across alternative exposure measures, policy windows, fixed-effect structures, lender controls, and placebo tests. Amount-weighted ratios show that the response is not confined to announcement counts, and public-record outcomes show that the rollout expands the borrower information visible to outside lenders. Public disclosure therefore changes how listed firms organize bank borrowing.
Sun et al. (Sun,) studied this question.