Funny Money or Legitimate Finance? Shadow Banking and Policy Impacts in China

Government officials in China have taken different views regarding shadow banking. Some have seen the industry as overly risky, potentially undermining the formal financial system, while others have asserted that it is an increasingly important part of the financial system, filling a gap in finance provision to particular sectors and smaller firms. Do their views matter? Regulators have striven to crack down on the riskiest practices in shadow banking, but are the policies effective? In this article, we analyze the impact of government attitudes and actions on the shadow banking sector. Using a unique data set based on information collected from various sources in a difference-in-difference model, we find that shadow banking regulation plays a strong role in China’s financial sector, while contradictory government views (in the form of commentary in the People’s Daily) on shadow banking do not. This reveals that shadow banking is strongly affected by political authority when it is codified into regulation. Only some aspects of shadow banking can be legitimized through regulation, while the remainder of China’s financial system remains constrained due to state dominance over the financial sector. This underscores the “funny” nature of shadow banking’s money flows. This article is one of the first to study the effects of government views and regulations on the shadow banking system.