Structure Multiplicity and Market Outcomes: Corporate Bond Issuances in China during 2009-2013

Understanding organizational dynamics in emerging financial markets motivates this dissertation. I investigate the impact of organizational relations on the allocation of financial capital and the formation of financial prices (i.e., rates of interest). I argue that structure multiplicity, namely, coordination of political and business relationships among governments, firms, and financial institutions, determines firms’ financial outcomes. The data for my analysis were derived from participant observation in a Chinese bank and a unique dataset of China’s corporate bond issuances that I compiled. My findings reveal that: 1) firms’ relationships with governments can effectively enlarge their financing volumes and reduce their financial prices; 2) firms can reinforce their financing capabilities through diversified and repeated interactions with bank underwriters; and 3) firms’ financial prices are partly determined by the density of underwriter networks and the proportion of government-related institutions in their networks. I further discover that firms’ political and business relationships reinforce the effect of each other in the allocation of financial capital. However, when determining financial prices, whether political and business relationships reinforce or counteract the effect of each other is contingent on the status of firms and the strengths of their business relationships