Comparing the Impact of Credit Constraints on the Growth of SMEs in a Transition Country with an Established Market Economy

In this paper we compare the role of internal finance on the growth of firms between a leading transition country, Slovenia and an established market economy, Belgium. We find that firms in Slovenia are more sensitive to internal financing constraints than their Belgian counterparts. Furthermore, we find that de novo firms and firms with long term debt are most constrained and that micro and SMES can face great difficulties in accessing external sources of finance. Foreign firms, however, are able to raise external finance and consequently their growth is less reliant on the availability of internal finance. Our findings appear to indicate that although Slovenian firms are no longer recipients of soft budget constraints, the financial environment is not yet fully functional.      

Should securities regulation promote equity crowdfunding?

In this paper, we show that too strong investor protection may harm small firms and entrepreneurial initiatives, which contrasts with the traditional “law and finance” view that stronger investor protection is better. This situation is particularly relevant in equity crowdfunding, which refers to a recent financial innovation originating on the Internet that targets small and innovative firms. In many jurisdictions, securities regulation offers exemptions to prospectus and registration requirements. We provide an into-depth discussion of recent regulatory reforms in different countries and discuss how they may impact equity crowdfunding. Building on a theoretical framework, we show that optimal regulation depends on the availability of an alternative early-stage financing such as venture capital and angel finance. Finally, we offer exploratory evidence from Germany on the impact of securities regulation on small business finance.     

The impact of long-term secured loans on exports at the firm-level: The case of a developing country

We analyze the role of the accumulation of long-term secured loans on the participation of firms in exporting activities. Internal sources of finance, such as cash balance and its equivalent as well as operating cash flow, may alleviate concerns on liquidity shocks and finance shorter-term variable costs but long-term secured loans are likely to be required to finance fixed costs related to investments in plant, machinery and other fixed assets that complement exporting activities. Exporting activities may involve hysteresis such that the likelihood of a firm to participate in exporting activities is influenced by the accumulation of long-term secured loans in the period prior to the export transactions. Even though the availability of internal sources of finance and the capital structure of a firm has greater economic significance, we observe that lagged long-term secured loans influences participation in exporting activities. Furthermore, we analyze the impact of one-year lagged long-term secured loans on the participation of firms in exporting activities based on the financial characteristics at the industry-level. This relationship holds for firms within industries with higher levels of long-term secured loans, higher levels of finance leverage, higher levels of asset tangibility and lower levels of total assets.     

How do firms finance their exports? – evidence from China

Using a firm-level production data over the period of 2005–2009 from China, this paper provides a new empirical evidence on how firms finance their exports when they have several financial options. The main results of the paper can be summarized as follows. First, firms who have better access to any finance are more likely to export and export more. More financial options lead to a higher export probability and capacity due to the complementary relation between financial options. Second, of all financial options, the internal finance captured by cash holdings or profit plays the most important role on firms’ export likelihood and volume. Firms rely more on the external finance through borrowing to start exporting, but depend more on issuing stocks to their shareholders to expand their exports. Third, subsample results suggest that the financial option of issuing stocks is generally more important for firms who have worse access to external finance in determining export propensity and quantity, such as private-owned firms, small-scale firms, young firms, and non-eastern firms.     

The Provision of Finance to Innovation: A Survey Conducted among Italian Technology-based Small Firms

Financial constraints to the development of innovation are often considered one of the main impediments to high-technology firms seeking to expand and grow. In particular this is the case of small and medium size high-tech firms. In the U.S. and the U.K. a variety of sources of finance are available to the start-ups of innovative firms; in the other European countries, and particularly in Italy, these means are still uncommon so that the development of technology is often prevented. This paper, based on an empirical analysis on a survey of 46 small high-tech Italian firms, aims at exploring the problems experienced by small businesses in gaining access to debt and equity finance. The results highlight that traditional financial sources are inadequate to finance innovative projects. The questioned firms rely mainly on personal finance, and secondly on short term bank debt; they are truly involved in maintaining control over the firm activities and are willing to issue outside equity only if the new investors also provide non financial competencies. Among the 46 interviewed firms, only 10 are willing to be listed in the future on small firms' stock markets.     

Firm Size,Source of Finance,and Growth - Evidence from China

Using a comprehensive firm-level data set from China spanning the period 1998–2005, this study investigates the relationship between firm size, financing sources, and total factor productivity growth. Controlling for the endogeneity of financing sources, we find that firm size plays an important role in the way financial structure affects the growth process. Domestic bank loans are more effective for bigger firms, while self-raised finance is more beneficial to smaller firms’ growth. We also uncover evidence that ownership mediates the relationship between firm size, finance, and growth.     

Financial Information Credibility,Legal Environment,and SMEs’ Access to Finance

Abstract

There remains academic debate on the association between credible financial information and small firms’ access to diversified sources of finance. This study investigates the role of credible financial information and its interaction with a country’s legal and regulatory environment on the access of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to diversified sources of finance in 129 developing countries. The findings indicate positive impacts of financial information quality and a country’s legal and regulatory environment on small firms’ access to diversified sources of finance. SMEs operating in a weak legal and regulatory environment benefit more from providing credible financial information. The findings are robust after controlling for the endogeneity of firms audit decision using a two-stage instrumental variable method. Our evidence suggests that firms’ credible signaling of the quality of their financial information helps reduce the adverse selection problem for finance suppliers, increasing small firms’ access to diversified sources of finance.     

The Financial Impact of ISO 14001 Certification: Top-Line, Bottom-Line, or Both?

It is not easy being green, but it does beg the question: Does being green pay off on the bottom-line? Unfortunately, that question of becoming ISO 14001 to reap financial benefit remains widely unanswered. In particular, corporate practice is interested in how environmental management impacts firms’ finance through top-line impact, bottom-line impact, or both—as this paves the way for an investment of environmental management. As current findings are mixed, our study tracks financial performance of publicly traded US firms between 1996 and 2005 to test whether ISO 14001 leads to improved financial performance. Employing a rigorous event-study approach, we compare certified firms to different control groups based on several matching criteria that include industry, size, and/or ROA. In the short run, ISO 14001 certification makes only a minor impact on the bottom-line, according to our results. However, these same results show a significant financial improvement over the long haul with ISO 14001 certification. Additionally, this long-term improvement also makes a significant improvement in top-line performance. Thus, we conclude that environmental management pays off along both dimensions.     

Funding Gaps? Access To Bank Loans By High-Tech Start-Ups

This paper aims to shed new light on start-up financing of new technology-based firms (NTBFs) and the existence of credit constraints that may negatively affect their activity. For this purpose, we analyze the different sources of start-up financing used by NTBFs and investigate several characteristics that may influence the extent of recourse to bank loans. In the empirical section, we consider a sample composed of 386 Italian NTBFs that operate both in manufacturing and services. We estimate double-censored tobit and bivariate tobit models so as to highlight the determinants of (i) the financial leverage, measured by the ratio of bank debt to total capital, and (ii) the amounts of personal capital and bank loans of firms at start-up, respectively. Our findings support the view that the credit market is imperfect and there exists a financing hierarchy. In fact, only a minority of firms resorts to outside financing, and especially to bank debt. In addition, the level of financial leverage is not random; it increases with an increase of the predicted amount of firms’ total initial capital, while it decreases with variables such as the number of owners and the work experience of founders that are indicative of greater personal wealth available to finance firms’ start-up. Lastly, the size of the bank loans obtained by firms generally is small and it is quite insensitive to demand-side factors that instead determine the amount of personal and total capital, with the notable exception of scale economies in the industry of the start-up. In other words, in accordance with the argument that credit to NTBFs is rationed, the loan supply curve is highly inelastic, even though not perfectly so.     

Access to Financing as a Barrier to Trade: Evidence From Mauritius

Access to credit is essential for the development and growth of firms. For a small open economy like Mauritius, the ability of firms to enter export markets is essential for their growth and development, given that the size of the local market is quite limited. To increase sales and profitability, firms have to export. However, there are several costs that are involved when firms enter an export market. In many cases, finance becomes an essential factor that influences firms’ ability to export. These authors investigate whether the main constraint that firms in Mauritius face is access to finance and try to understand how firms overcome financial barriers. Given the limitations of existing methods to estimate financing constraints directly from firm-level accounting data, the results based on survey data are an important contribution in improving understanding of firms’ financing obstacles to exporting and how they overcome these barriers.     

Organizational Virtue and Stakeholder Interdependence: An Empirical Examination of Financial Intermediaries and IPO Firms

Organizational virtue orientation (OVO), an organizational-level construct, refers to the integrated set of beliefs and values that support ethical character traits and virtuous behaviors. To advance the study of organizational virtue, we examine OVO in firms making their initial public offerings (IPOs), with respect to key external stakeholders that serve as financial intermediaries (i.e., venture capital firms and underwriting banks). Drawing on stakeholder and resource dependence theories, we argue that mutual interdependencies occur between financial intermediaries and IPO firms such that venture capital firms’ ownership levels and underwriter reputation are positively associated with the selection of more virtuous IPO firms. We also argue for the moderating relationship of IPO firm age on these main relationships; since IPO firms have more history and information availability, less importance will be placed on OVO in the selection process. In support of our hypotheses, the results of this study suggest the organizational virtue of IPO firms influences the selection decisions of financial intermediaries by reflecting positively on these key stakeholders to improve legitimacy and reputation.     

数字金融的公司治理效应--基于非家族股东治理视角

非家族股东治理能够有效助力家族企业实现可持续发展与现代化转型的目标,因而提升非家族股东治理水平具有重要意义。数字金融作为传统金融发展模式的重要创新,能够实现“金融服务实体经济”的目标,促使非家族股东积极参与家族企业治理。基于此,本文以代理理论与社会情感财富理论为基础,探讨了数字金融对非家族股东治理的影响。实证检验发现,随着数字金融的发展,非家族股东治理水平不断提升。其作用机制在于,数字金融能够通过缓解代理冲突、弱化家族控制与强化传承意愿,提升非家族股东治理水平。拓展性分析发现,对于非创业型、融资约束较强、位于金融监管程度较强地区的家族企业来说,数字金融对非家族股东治理的积极效应更显著;数字金融对异质性非家族股东制衡度存在差异化影响,即相较于外资股东与机构股东制衡度,数字金融能够强化国有股东与民营股东对家族股东的制衡;数字金融能够通过提升非家族股东治理水平促进家族企业可持续发展。本文从数字金融视角探究非家族股东治理的动机,丰富了数字金融与非家族股东治理的相关研究。     

Trust or Hierarchy? Changing Relationships Between Large and Small Firms in France

An influential position in the contemporary study of industrial reorganisation discusses the construction of inter-firm trust as a way to adjust the organisation of firms to the flexibility required by the market. The conventional picture of the relation between large firms in France and small firms who supply them, suggests that it is very hard for them to construct such trust-based networks. Instead, it is one of atomised sub-contracting: the large firm gives very detailed specifications for the job that needs to be done, and the subcontractor executes. In recent years, however, several accounts have suggested that this arms-length relationship between larger firms and suppliers is changing.The argument of this paper is that, while the relationships between suppliers and large firms are indeed undergoing tremendous changes, the category of trust does not appear to capture the nature of these changes very well. The combined use of their market power and the political resources that large firms have at their disposal, allow them to remain the stronger partner in what always was an asymmetric power relationship. The argument is supported by detailed discussions of just-in-time delivery, quality issues and the role of the large firms in organising small firm finance.     

Corporate environmental performance and financing decisions

We investigate the financing strategies of environmentally responsible firms to understand how they set target capital structures and make incremental financing decisions. Literature shows that firms with better environmental performance have lower risk and better access to financing. However, it is not obvious how these firms choose to finance their investments. Using an extensive data set of U.S. firms, we find that firms with superior environmental performance have significantly lower debt ratios and use mostly short‐term debt for temporary financing needs. In doing so, environmentally responsible firms are able to achieve more tax savings and experience lower costs of financial distress. Our results provide new empirical facts about environmental performance and financing decisions, and they help explain the observed relationship between environmental performance and economic performance.     

Small businesses and liquidity constraints in financing business investment: Evidence from shanghai's manufacturing sector

When firms experience financial hierarchy, external finance, if at all available, is substantially more expensive than internal finance. Factors such as transaction costs, agency problem, and asymmetric information have created such a hierarchy. Stiglitz and Weiss (1981) argue that asymmetric information between firms and potential suppliers of external finance creates adverse selection and moral hazard problems in the credit market in developed market economies. This problem of a higher cost of external finance is commonly thought to be more serious for small firms because they are more disadvantaged than their larger counterparts in accessing external finance due to several factors: (1) Public information on small firms is generally not available and leads to the even greater problem of asymmetric information, i.e., more severe adverse selection and moral hazard problems. These information problems have excluded small firms from bond and share markets. (2) Due to the lack of available means of external finance, small firms rely more heavily on bank loans than their larger counterparts. In addition, as small firms are more interested in cultivating stable relationships with a few banks in order to secure a stable supply of credit, these banks become virtual monopolies by lending to small businesses and exercise their market power in lending to small firms.Most of existing research considers only small firms in market economies; little research has been done to understand the relationship between firm size and investment financing in any economy in transition. This paper makes a contribution to the literature by studying the relationship between firm size and liquidity constraints by using a firm level data of manufacturing enterprises in Shanghai during the period of 1989–1992. We consider whether small manufacturing firms in Shanghai are constrained by the availability of liquidity compared with their larger counterparts when they are financing their fixed investment. In a transforming economy such as China (or other similar transition economies), external finance relies heavily on loans from banks that are fully owned by the state. Due to historical reasons, allocations of credit are always biased in favor of state-owned enterprises. Such a `lending bias' imposes an extra cost on small Chinese enterprises in financing investment as the majority of them are not state-owned.In such an environment, our empirical results show that small manufacturing firms in Shanghai are actually less liquidity-constrained than their larger counterparts in financing their fixed investment. This surprising result is rather different from what people normally predict based on the experience in market economies. We suggest three possible explanations for this peculiar finding: (1) The composition of various firm size classes plays an important role in explaining the result: Non-state enterprises which are fast growing and efficient dominate the small firm classes. Their successes in the markets helps them to generate enough internal funds to smooth their investment over time. (2) The presence of heavy indebtedness of large state-owned enterprises may deprive them of sufficient cash available for investment decision. Given that state-owned enterprises have been making heavy losses, the central and regional governments have a liquidity problem in satisfying their huge liquidity demands. (3) Small enterprises in non-state sectors can rely on the informal credit market to obtain funds for investment although they are excluded from the state banking system.However, the further trade liberalization in terms of eliminating tariffs and quotas caused by China's bid of joining the WTO will erode the profits of these small enterprises as imported goods will be supplied at lower prices. In addition, further reforms in financial sectors may also affect the supply of external finance to small enterprises in nonstate sectors. The consequence may lead to a tight liquidity constraint for small enterprises in China.     

Trade Credit in Small and Medium Size Firms: An Application of the System Estimator With Panel Data

Financing through suppliers is a subject that has been little studied in the economic literature in general and in corporate finance in particular. Although several hypotheses have been put forward to explain the different reasons behind this phenomenon, trade credit is not based on a general theory. This study provides empirical evidence about factors determining the use of trade credit for a sample of small and medium size firms, which are potentially the firms that would follow this financing route, since they are more rationed in credit markets. Using a panel of Canary-Island firms from 1990 to 1996, and by means of specifications with the system estimator, results reveal that trade credit leads to a reduction in asymmetric information between firms and their financial backers, as well as in transaction costs. Furthermore, we confirm the theory that companies with easier access to institutional finance act as a credit channel for those with greater difficulties to obtain external funds.     

Founder Expertise,Strategic Choices,Formation, and Survival of High‐Tech SMEs in China: A Resource‐Substitution Approach

This paper uses a resource‐based perspective to better understand how the three most established expertise possessed by founding entrepreneurs influence the development path of firms operating in the high‐tech industrial sector. The longitudinal evidence from two rounds of face‐to‐face interviews with the owners of Chinese high‐tech SMEs in 2004 and 2009 identifies three business strategic choices innovation, product, and production that are essential to optimize the expertise and sources of finance available for creating and growing a high‐tech business. The findings from the interview evidence offer novel insights into the entrepreneurial development path of firms associated with types of entrepreneurs and availability of financial sources possessed by founding entrepreneurs.     

Where Do Financial Constraints Originate from? An Empirical Analysis of Adverse Selection and Moral Hazard in Capital Markets

Despite the voluminous and growing literature on financial constraints, the origins of the constraints are hardly ever empirically analyzed. This paper offers such an analysis. We study, in particular, the empirical prevalence of adverse selection and moral hazard in capital markets using a unique survey data on Finnish small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The survey data suggest that adverse selection is empirically more prevalent than moral hazard in the capital markets that the SMEs face. We also find that of the variables indicating the presence of adverse selection and moral hazard, the former has more explanatory power in regressions modeling the availability of external finance to the SMEs than the latter. Finally, we document that our proxies for adverse selection and moral hazard are inversely related to the age of firms, just like Peter Diamond’s (1989) model predicts.     

Financing patterns in transition economies: Privatized former SOEs versus ab initio private firms

We employ 37,987 firms in 30 transition economies to investigate the relation between the origins of private firms and their financing patterns. We find that relative to ab initio (from the beginning) private firms, privatized former state-owned enterprises (SOEs) finance a higher proportion of their fixed assets from bank finance (especially from state-owned banks) and supplier credit. We argue that privatized former SOEs continue to benefit from the political and financial connections established during their SOE era. We document that country governance, financial development and legal origins play an important role in the financing patterns of privatized versus private firms.     

珠江三角洲财经类人才培养与需求状况的实证研究

人才供求的结构性失衡是当前珠江三角洲地区财经类人才市场的主要问题之一。要解决这一问题,首先就需要对这一市场供求失衡的现状和原因进行调查研究。本文通过对珠江三角洲地区的企事业单位进行问卷调查,采用SPSS软件进行编码分析,总结出该地区对财经类毕业生素质要求的三个维度,研究了非财经类毕业生与财经类毕业生的真实表现和企业真实需求之间的差异,以及这两类毕业生真实表现之间的差异,并从财经类高等院校财经类专业的人才培养角度提出了改善该地区财经类人才结构性失衡现状的政策建议。