Financial deregulation and operational risks of energy enterprise: The shock of liberalization of bank lending rate in China

Highlights: • Explores the impacts of financial deregulation on Chinese energy enterprises' operational risks. • Financial deregulation could lower energy enterprise's operational risks. • The impacts of financial deregulation on operational risks are heterogeneous. • Financial deregulation affects operational risks of energy enterprises through easing financing constraints and reversing enterprise financialization. • Identifies the causality between financial deregulation and enterprise operational risks from the perspective of bank lending rate liberalization. This paper investigates the effects of financial deregulation on the energy enterprises' operational risks in China, based on 230 Chinese energy enterprises' yearly data spanning from 2003 to 2018. The results show that financial deregulation can lower the energy enterprise's operational risks through easing financing constraints and reversing the financialization tendency of energy enterprises. In addition, the impact of financial deregulation is heterogeneous across different features of energy enterprises. After replacing core indicators, changing model settings, and solving endogenous problems, the above conclusions are still robust, which provides robust evidence from the perspective of the interest rates liberalization.