Is banking competition beneficial to SMEs? An empirical study based on Italian data

Using a large panel of Italian firms, spanning the years from 1995 to 2003, this study investigates the relationship between bank debt and non-financial SMEs’ performance, evaluating whether and to what extent this link is affected by the degree of competition characterising the local credit market where firms operate. Controlling for inertia, unobserved heterogeneity and the endogeneity of some performance determinants, we find that the (negative) impact of bank debt on firms’ performance is weaker for firms running in more competitive banking markets. We interpret this result as evidence that a more intense banking competition may lead to better credit conditions for small and medium-sized firms.     

Cross-border banking,credit access,and the financial crisis

We study the sensitivity of credit supply to bank financial conditions in 16 emerging European countries before and during the financial crisis. We use survey data on 10,701 applicant and non-applicant firms that enable us to disentangle effects driven by positive and negative shocks to the banking system from demand shocks that may vary across lenders. We find strong evidence that firms' access to credit was affected by changes in the financial conditions of their banks. During the crisis firms were more credit constrained if they were dealing with banks that experienced a decline in equity and Tier 1 capital, as well as losses on financial assets. We also find that access to credit reflects the balance sheet conditions of foreign parent banks. The effect of positive and negative shocks to a bank is greater for riskier firms and firms with fewer tangible assets.     

Geography and capital structure

We investigate the impact of geographic location on firms’ capital structure decisions. We find strong evidence that location of a firm influences its capital structure. In particular, we find that centrally located firms have lower leverage ratios than do remotely located ones. Moreover, consistent with the hypothesis that those remotely located firms face more severe adverse selection problems, the effect of geographic location on capital structure is more pronounced when information asymmetry is higher. We further examine alternative explanations of the negative relation between firm geographic proximity and capital structure and show that the financial constraint effect and industry clustering effect do not explain our results. Copyright © 2016 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

FDI,market signal and financing constraints of firms in China

On the basis of an augmented Euler equation, we use firm survey data provided by the World Bank to investigate the impact of FDI (foreign direct investment) on the financing constraints of firms in China. First we calculate the forward and backward linkages of FDI. Then through empirical estimation, we find that only private firms have financing constraints and that the incoming FDI alleviates this situation. Private firms with more foreign capital shares or having stronger vertical linkage with FDI can get financial resources easily. Furthermore, industries hosting a large amount of FDI are favorite clients of the financial institutions because they are usually much more competitive in the world. As a result, the private firms in these industries also have easier access to financial resources. In the financial market, FDI is a helping hand that reduces the information asymmetry between firms and financial institutions. Financial resources go where FDI goes, which to some extent improves the allocation efficiency.     

Innovation and Competition in the Netherlands: Testing the Inverted-U for Industries and Firms

Competition can be good or bad for innovation by firms. On the one hand it stimulates firms to innovate in order to escape competition, on the other hand it hampers firms to reap additional profits from innovation. The recent literature has embraced a model that describes an inverted-U shape relationship between competition and innovation at the industry-level. With the Price Cost Margin and Profit Elasticity as measures of competition, we find evidence supporting this prediction using industry data from the Dutch National Accounts. Moreover, we test the non-linear relation at the micro-level, with special attention for the role of the distribution of technology within industries. We find evidence that there is a threshold for this ‘technology spread’ at which the (marginal) effect of competition on innovation activity by firms turns from positive to negative.     

Financial vulnerability and export dynamics

This paper examines the implication of financial shocks on firms’ export dynamics in developing economies. To address this question, we use the Exporter Dynamics Dataset, which contains new data on the microstructure of exports for 34 developing countries between 1997 and 2011, and investigate how exporter behaviour is affected by financial crises. We find that financial crises in both the origin and destination countries have a large negative effect on firm, product and destination dynamics, particularly in industries dependent on external finance. Financial crises make the costs of exporting more difficult to meet and in turn reduce firms’ ability to start exporting, introduce new products and sell to new destinations. We also find that the impact of financial crises is less pronounced in exporting countries with relatively more open capital accounts, suggesting that portfolio inflows may be a good substitute for underdeveloped domestic financial markets.     

Foreign currency exposure and balance sheet effects: A firm-level analysis for Korea

If firms match the currency composition of their liabilities with that of their assets or income, a currency depreciation will have an ambiguous effect on investment of firms holding foreign debt. Using Korean firm-level data, we first find evidence of currency matching. We then show that foreign debt has a significant negative balance sheet effect on firm investment following a depreciation, once foreign assets and exports are controlled for. The balance sheet effect is particularly severe for firms subject to financial constraints. The inclusion of foreign assets is important for identifying the balance sheet effect separately from the competitiveness effect.     

How does stock market liberalization influence corporate innovation? Evidence from Stock Connect scheme in China

Using China's Stock Connect program as a quasi-natural experiment, we assess the impact of stock market liberalization on corporate innovation. The baseline result based on a difference-in-differences (DID) estimation suggests that allowing foreign investors to buy domestic stocks has a beneficial effect on Chinese firms' innovative outputs. Specifically, eligible firms affected by the Stock Connect scheme generate more and higher quality patents than other unaffected firms subsequently. Furthermore, we explore potential channels that may explain this beneficial effect in terms of improving corporate governance, reducing information asymmetry, and mitigating financial constraints. In addition, the effect is more pronounced for firms in high-tech industries. However, we find that the influence of stock market liberalization is insignificant in state-owned firms. Besides, the findings are generally robust to different measures of innovation and different methods of estimation. Overall, this paper provides new insights into understanding the positive effect of stock market liberalization in emerging market economies.     

Nonfinancial companies as large shareholders alleviate financial constraints of Brazilian firm

We analyze whether financial constraints of Brazilian firms are alleviated by ownership structure. More specifically, we study whether the presence of nonfinancial firms as shareholders of Brazilian firm mitigates financial constraints. We find that the presence of nonfinancial firms as significant shareholders reduces financial constraints, probably because such blockholders are able to reduce asymmetric information problems that are at the origin of financial constraints. This result indicates that the changes in the corporate ownership of the Brazilian firms, achieved within the country's structural changes, have been positive for firm investment and have contributed to the development of Brazil.     

The Harm of Symbolic Actions and Green-Washing: Corporate Actions and Communications on Environmental Performance and Their Financial Implications

We examine over 100 top performing Canadian firms in visibly polluting industries as we seek to answer four research questions: What specific environmental issues are firms addressing? How do these issues differ between industries? Are both symbolic and substantive actions financially beneficial? Does green-washing, measured as the difference between symbolic and substantive action, and/or green-highlighting, measured as the combined effect of symbolic and substantive actions, pay? We find that substantive actions of environmental issues (green walk) neither harm nor benefit firms financially, but symbolic actions (green talk) are negatively related to financial performance. We also find that green-washing (discrepancy between green talk and green walk) has a negative effect on financial performance and green-highlighting (concentrated efforts of the talk and walk) has no effect on financial performance. In this article, we provide explanations of our findings and put forth future research directions.     

Do Financial Constraints Matter for Foreign Market Entry? A Firm‐level Examination

Recent theoretical and empirical contributions stress the importance of financial development for international trade. This paper investigates whether financial constraints matter for foreign market entry at the firm level using dynamic panel data techniques. Dynamic Probit and Tobit models that account for state dependence and unobserved heterogeneity are used to analyse the effect of financial indicators on export activities. The empirical framework tests for heterogeneous effects among different quartiles of the size and productivity distribution, across previous exporters and potential starters, and across different types of industries as those are predicted by theoretical models. The empirical analysis is applied to a large panel dataset of French manufacturing firms over the years 1998–2005. The data contain a high share of small firms that are usually the most likely to be financially constrained. Although financial indicators are significantly correlated with export status and export share, there is no evidence that financial constraints have a direct impact on foreign market participation or sales in foreign markets once observed and unobserved firm heterogeneity is controlled for. This result is robust to using alternative estimation techniques and also holds for subgroups of firms that are more likely to face financial constraints and industries that are more dependent on financial factors.     

Market Incentives for Business Innovation: Results from Canada

Are more competitive industries more innovative? Empirical investigation into various theories of innovation in industrial organization, agency theory, or endogenous growth, make diverse predictions with respect to this long-standing open question in economics. In this paper, we investigate the empirical relationship between competition intensity and firm innovation using a new micro-database containing a large sample of Canadian manufacturing enterprises over the 2000–05 period. Using three different measures of competition intensity, we find evidence that competition intensity is positively related to firm-level expenditures on research and development (R&D) in Canadian manufacturing industries. However, we also find that this relationship is dampened when more firms are further from the technological frontier of their industry. Nevertheless, the results provide evidence for a Schumpeterian interpretation, whereby market power can increase business incentives for innovation when many firms are technological laggards.     

Bank Work Experience Versus Political Connections: Which Matters for Bank Loan Financing?

This paper examines how bank lending decisions are affected either by executives’ connections with banks, through their former banking experience, or by their political connections with governments, using a sample of bank loans granted to Chinese listed non‐state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) from 2003 to 2010. We find that bank loans are more closely related to profitability for firms with bank connections, while firms’ political connections weaken this relationship. We further find that the influence of bank connections is more significant for firms from less supported industries or less developed regions. Furthermore, firms with bank connections are less likely to become financially distressed after the initiation of their bank loans and experience higher future stock returns, while firms with political connections experience the opposite outcome. Overall, our results indicate that in the context of a relationship‐based economy like China, firms’ connections with banks create value by alleviating information asymmetry and improving banks’ lending decisions, while political connections result in capital misallocation and subsequent deterioration in performance.     

Financial sector in resource-dependent economies

This paper examines financial sector characteristics in resource-dependent economies. Using an extensive data set covering 128 countries for the period 1995 to 2009, we present empirical evidence that the banking sector tends to be smaller in resource-dependent economies. Moreover, we locate a low threshold level at which the higher resource-dependence begins to be harmful for domestic banking sector. We also find evidence that the use of market-based financing is more common in resource-dependent economies. Further, our results suggest that a financial sector formed according to the needs of the resource sector might be unfavorable for emerging businesses, thereby hampering economic diversification and reinforcing the resource curse.     

Corporate cash holdings and promoter ownership

We examine the relationship between corporate cash holdings and promoter ownership for a sample of Indian non-financial firms. Consistent with the arguments of the ‘efficient monitoring hypothesis’, our results broadly suggest that promoter ownership is negatively associated with cash holdings, thereby highlighting the role of large owners in preventing cash accretion in an emerging market context. Indicating prominent influence of corporate ownership on cash management, we find that corporate non-promoter ownership is also negatively related with cash holdings. With regard to promoter ownership of foreign entities, our results suggest that cash holdings share a U-shaped relationship with ownership of foreign promoter corporations. In addition, our findings provide weak evidence to support a more pronounced negative association between cash holdings and promoter ownership for group-affiliated firms as compared to non-affiliated firms since the former faces lower financial constraints on account of access to internal capital markets. Finally, we perform long-term effect analysis in order to reinforce robustness of our results.     

The age-effect of financial indicators as buffers against the liability of newness

This paper builds on the liabilities of newness literature to suggest that accounting information is important for new firms. Using a sample of over 30,000 companies followed during their first 7 years of existence, we find evidence that financial indicators mitigate the liability of newness and that this buffering effect is stronger the younger the organization. These results represent three primary contributions to the literature. First, our conceptualization of accounting measures as indicators of external (creditworthiness enhancing legitimacy) as well as internal (targets for management) buffers to the liabilities of newness provides a novel way of viewing these constructs and explains why they are important to new firms despite their uncertainty and opacity. Second, we theoretically justify and empirically validate that these constructs are more important the younger the new firm is, which runs counter to the common wisdom of these constructs in the entrepreneurship literature. Third, we identify buffers against failure for new firms that are generalizable across industries.     

Anticorruption,political connections,and corporate cash policy: Evidence from politician downfalls in China

We examine how firms change their cash policies in response to the downfall of corrupt politicians in China. We find that firms connected to their local government increase cash holdings when high-profile politician downfalls occur in the government. Consistent with the precautionary saving argument, the effect is stronger for firms that have greater investment opportunities or face greater financial constraints. Compared to unaffected firms, affected firms save more cash out of cash flows and have a higher marginal value of cash holdings. Overall, we show that the collapse of firms' political connections has significant impacts on those firms' financial policies.     

Does Board Gender Diversity Have a Financial Impact? Evidence Using Stock Portfolio Performance

There is growing regulatory pressure on firms worldwide to address the under-representation of women in senior positions. Regulators have taken a variety of approaches to the issue. We investigate a jurisdiction that has issued recommendations and disclosure requirements, rather than implementing quotas. Much of the rhetoric surrounding gender diversity centres on whether diversity has a financial impact. In this paper we take an aggregate (market-level) approach and compare the performance of portfolios of firms with gender diverse boards to those without. We also investigate whether having multiple women on the board is linked to performance, and if there is a within-industry effect. Overall, we do not find evidence of an association between diversity and performance. We find some weak evidence of a negative correlation between having multiple women on the board and performance, but that in some industries diversity is positively correlated with performance.     

Surviving globalisation

This paper investigates the effects of international trade on firms' strategies for industry exit, either via closedown, switching industry or being acquired. We use a rich dataset of Swedish firms that extends over two decades to track firm choices between alternative strategies. We find that higher levels of international competition increase the probability of exit by merger and closedown. If trade is more intra-industry in character, the effect of import penetration on the probability of exit is less. The probability of exit by switching industry is higher in revealed comparative disadvantage industries. Finally, we find that the geographical source of international competition is important, the effects of trade on exit being strongest when trading partners are other OECD countries.     

Direct effect of advertising spending on firm value: Moderating role of financial analyst coverage

Previous research distinguishes between direct and indirect effects of advertising spending on firm value. This research focuses on the direct effect of advertising based on the spillover and signaling effect of advertising. Both effects are the result of increased public information flow about the firm created by advertising. Another source of public information flow about firms is information produced by financial analysts. We hypothesize that the direct effect of advertising on firm value will be stronger for firms not covered by financial analysts than for those that are covered because investors may rely on information flow from financial analysts for covered firms and rely on information flow from advertising in the absence of analyst coverage. Using financial and accounting databases for publicly traded firms for a period from 1975 to 2015, we test this hypothesis and find empirical evidence for the moderating role of analyst coverage in the relationship between advertising spending and firm value.