Absolute Blockchain Strength? Evidence from the ABS Market in China

Abstract

This working paper is written by Jing Liu (Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation), Ilhyock Shim (Bank for International Settlements) and Yanfeng Zheng (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology).

Blockchain, a type of distributed ledger technology, has become a buzzword in the past decade. Its potential to challenge current business practices such as financial transactions has been touted or criticised by numerous researchers and practitioners. Nonetheless, academic literature thus far has provided little empirical evidence on how financial services benefit from such new technology. We exploit the emerging asset-backed security (ABS) market in China and its rapid adoption of blockchain technology. We examine whether blockchain-based ABS products enjoy better pricing than those not based on blockchain after controlling potential endogeneity with coarsened exact matching. Analysing approximately 5,000 ABS products issued between 2015 and 2020, we show that the adoption of blockchain technology indeed reduces the yield spread by approximately 25 basis points and that this benefit is heterogeneous across the different underlying asset classes and institutional arrangements. Interestingly, we find that social factors such as familiarity among key ABS parties may increase or decrease the benefit of adopting blockchain in ABS products depending on the asset classes and regulatory environments. Our study makes a timely contribution to the debate surrounding blockchain technology and its implication for the financial sector.

Keywords: asset-backed security, blockchain, financial technology, social embeddedness, technology adoption

JEL Classification: G30, G32, M40, O33