1953 
2881High leverage is one of the significant risk challenges currently facing the Chinese economy. The Administrative Measures for Joint Credit by Banking Financial Institutions (Trial) aims to reduce credit risks associated with rising corporate leverage through interbank information sharing and collaborative supervision. Therefore, whether the implementation of this policy can curb corporate leverage manipulation and promote substantial corporate leverage reduction is of great significance in reducing corporate debt risks and preventing systemic financial risks.
Using data from China’s A-share listed companies between 2013 and 2022, this paper examines the impact of interbank cooperation on corporate leverage manipulation by employing the implementation of joint bank credit as a quasi-natural experiment. The results indicate that joint bank credit can inhibit corporate leverage manipulation and still remains robust after excluding the competing hypotheses of resource constraints and governance slack. This effect is mainly driven by improving the efficiency of credit capital allocation and enhancing the effectiveness of bank supervision and governance. Heterogeneity analysis finds that the inhibitory effect of joint bank credit on corporate leverage manipulation is more pronounced among non-state-owned enterprises and enterprises with established banking relationships and a lower level of stable equity, as well as in environments characterized by lower media attention, insufficient creditor protection, and weaker banking competition. In addition, the suppression of corporate leverage manipulation by joint bank credit can further reduce the risk of corporate debt default.
The main contributions of this paper are as follows: First, it evaluates the policy effect of joint bank cre-dit from the perspective of substantive corporate deleveraging, extending the literature on how interbank cooperation affects accounting information quality and offering practical insights for policy implementation. Second, it enriches the research related to bank governance and corporate leverage manipulation from the perspective of interbank cooperation, which helps to prevent major financial risks. Third, it advocates for strengthened banking sector cooperation, delivering empirical support for establishing innovative interbank and bank-enterprise collaboration models to enhance financial services’ effectiveness in serving the real economy.
