We investigate the influence of financial and political factors on peer-to-peer (P2P) platform failures in China's online lending market. Using a competing risk model for platform survival, we show that large platforms, platforms with listed firms as large shareholders, and platforms with better information disclosure were less likely to go bankrupt or run off (platform owners abscond with investor funds). More importantly, failing platforms were much less likely to run off in advance of major political events, but more likely to declare bankruptcy or run off after such events. These effects are more pronounced for politically connected platforms, platforms operating in provinces where local officials have close ties with central government, and in provinces with better local financial conditions. Our study highlights the role of political incentives on government regulatory intervention in platform failures.

This article investigates the influence of financial development on patterns of industrial specialization across China’s regions. We find that industrial sectors reliant on access to external finance tend to concentrate in regions with well-developed financial markets. Both foreign direct investment (FDI) and alternative financing channels are shown to play significant roles in shaping patterns of industrial specialization in China. In contrast, proxies for formal financial markets, for example, the banking system and capital markets, have few effects on regional industrial agglomeration. This result remains robust to instrumental variable estimation, alternative model specifications, and controlling for other traditional determinants of regional specialization.

We examine China’s June 2013 liquidity crunch as a negative shock to banks and analyze the wealth effects on exchange-listed firms. Our findings suggest that liquidity shocks to financial institutions negatively impact borrower performance, particularly borrowers reporting outstanding loans at the end of 2012. Stock valuations of firms with long-term bank relationships, however, outperform the market and experience smaller subsequent declines in investment than peers lacking solid banking relationships. This effect is the strongest for firms that enjoy good relations with China’s large state-owned banks or foreign banks, and weakest for firms whose connections are solely with local banks. We document a positive correlation between the stock performances of firms and the stock performances of lender banks and the likelihood of lender banks operating as net lenders in the interbank market. These results suggest that banks transmit liquidity shocks to their borrowing firms and that a long-term bank-firm relationship may mitigate the negative effects of a liquidity shock.

How does social capital affect trust? Evidence from a Chinese peer-to-peer lending platform shows that regional social capital affects the trustee’s trustworthiness and the trustor’s trust propensity. Ceteris paribus, borrowers from regions with higher social capital receive larger bids from individual lenders and have higher funding success, larger loan sizes, and lower default rates, especially for low-quality borrowers. Lenders from regions with higher social capital take higher risks and have higher default rates, especially for inexperienced lenders. Cross-regional transactions are most (least) likely to be realized between parties from regions with high (low) social capital.