Abstract: The "productivity puzzle" that growth of total factor productivity is slowing down, One of the roots maybe lie in the financial behavior of enterprises, which shows that enterprises are increasingly prefer to allocate financial assets. In theory, the allocation of corporate financial assets has a dual mechanism of "savings" and "squeezing out" for total factor productivity. Further, Based on the data on the A-share listed companies of manufacturing industry from 2008 to 2016, a GMM method is used to demonstrate the hypothesis of financial interpretation to explicate"productivity mystery".The results show:(1) Although manufacturing enterprises' TFP has been continuously increasing, the allocation of financial assets is not a "promotion factor" in this process, but rather a restraining force. (2) The "crowding out" effect of financial asset allocation is greater than the "savings" effect; it means that the arbitrage motivation of companies is stronger than that of savings. (3) Moreover, The "savings" effect of non-state-owned manufacturing companies is even more pronounced, while the state-owned manufacturing companies are more "extruded". (4) In addition, the smaller the financing constraints, the higher the leverage ratio, the more concentrated the institutional investors, the larger the scale of the enterprise, and the lower the Tobin Q value, the more preference the financial asset allocation has to the "crowd-out"effect. Therefore, we must be alert to the over-expansion of corporate financial activities and adopt a differentiated economic policy of "sparse" and "blocking" so that manufacturing companies can "have peace of mind to do their own job".

Key words: financial asset allocation, total factor productivity, crowding effect, saving effect