Policy-induced firms’ supply chain resilience: evidence from China’s central bank collateral framework expansion

By employing collateral expansion to channel finance to the real economy, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) has attracted growing attention to the microeconomic effects of its policy tools. Using the 2013 inclusion of AAA-rated corporate bonds into the PBoC‘s collateral expansion policy (CEP) as a quasi-natural experiment, this study examines how CEP affects firms’ supply chain resilience. The empirical results indicate that CEP significantly strengthens firms‘supply chain resilience and robust to a series of robustness tests. Mechanism analyses indicate that the collateral expansion enhanced firms’ supply chain resilience through three complementary channels: alleviating financing constraints along the supply chain, strengthening bank monitoring and governance efficiency, and fostering stable strategic and innovation-oriented partnerships. Heterogeneity analyses reveal stronger effects among firms with greater market power, state ownership, and those located in economically advanced regions, while firms outside regulated sectors and more mature firms also benefit more significantly. These findings provide new evidence on the interaction between monetary policy, real-sector firms, and supply chains, and offer policy insights into structurally enhancing economic resilience.