Externally Financed Research Articles

Corporate Transparency and Externally Financed Firm Growth

ABSTRACT Employing a comprehensive measure of country-level corporate transparency, we document a positive relation between corporate transparency and externally financed firm growth. This relation is robust to controlling for variables related to the quality of a country's legal institutions and the overall level of financial development. We also show that the level of external financing in the form of long-term debt is higher among firms in countries with greater corporate transparency. Further cross-sectional tests reveal that the role of corporate transparency in firm growth and external financing is less pronounced among bank-oriented countries as compared to market-oriented countries. In sum, our evidence highlights the positive impact of corporate transparency on economic growth through its impact on firm access to low-cost external financing.

The Persistent Effects of Financial Crises on the Composition of Real Investment

Our paper provides the first cross-country evidence on the distinct dynamics of tangible and intangible investments during and after the global financial crisis. The pre-crisis rise of intangible-to-tangible capital ratio was reversed outside the U.S. due to a greater decline of intangible investment and a much slower recovery. Tangible capital can be externally financed, and its post-crisis recovery benefits from the restoration of credit supply. In contrast, Intangible investment relies on firms’ liquidity holdings that were drawn down in the crisis and can only be rebuilt gradually through retained profits. We provide a unified account of the findings through a dynamic model of corporate investment and liquidity management. Consistent with our model predictions, the divergence between tangible and intangible investments is more prominent in countries with weaker intellectual property protection (less external financing options for intangibles) and riskier government bonds (less robust corporate liquidity holdings).

Collectivism, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Innovation, and other Antecedents of Externally Financed Growth in Pakistani Firms

To foster firm growth, it is now established that access to finance through well-functioning capital markets is a necessary pre-requisite. Moreover, other factors like formal institutions embedded in the legal environment and framework also condition financial constraints at the macro level. Similarly, informal institutional structures like culture, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, and Innovation can also interact at the firm level, and serve as a constraint to the use of external finance in firms’ growth strategies. Internal factors affecting willingness are sometimes more important drivers as compared to external factors that enhance capabilities. This paper explored the role of these internal factors like Collectivism, Innovation, leadership, entrepreneurship, customer orientation, level of employee development, communication strategies, that serve as informal institutional frameworks that condition self-imposed external financial constrain in firms’ growth strategies. To establish empirical validity, data was gathered from 150 companies ranging from small to midsize organizations based in Karachi. Data were collected by conducting a survey using a close-ended questionnaire and analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis and structured equation modeling. The results suggested that communication strategies, level of employee development, entrepreneurship, and Innovation have a positive and significant effect on Externally Financed Growth. Interestingly, leadership affects growth negatively. The finding implies that firms' ability to overcome financial constraints is significantly affected by internal factors along with financial development.

Culture and externally financed firm growth

In this paper, we provide the first firm-level evidence on the importance of culture, and its interdependence with legal (formal) institutions in affecting firms' use of external financing to fund growth. We conjecture that culture, after controlling for its macro-economic impact through political and legal institutions, has a direct micro-economic effect on firm-level growth. Using an international sample of 42,341 firms from 56 countries over the period 1989 to 2012, we find support for our hypothesis that cultural dimensions of individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance and power distance affect firm's ability to overcome financial constraints, with individualism exhibiting a strong robust impact compared to the other dimensions. We further find that the link between individualism and growth is stronger in countries with low access to finance, suggesting that firms' ability to overcome financial constraints is more affected by individualism when access to finance is lower.

The effects of accounting restatements on firm growth

Do restatements result in lower firm growth? One argument in support of this contention is that accounting restatements hurt contracting relations between the firm and outside parties such as a firm’s customers and suppliers, negatively impacting firm cash flows. The negative impact on cash flow reduces the level of internal cash holdings available for investment. Another argument is that restatements dampen firm growth by increasing the firm’s cost of external financing. We empirically evaluate these arguments by using the standard sales growth based financial planning model. In carrying out our analysis, we distinguish the effects of restatement on overall firm growth as well as its components of internally and externally financed growth. Our findings suggest that overall firm growth rates decline following a restatement. Furthermore, we find that accounting restatements have a greater adverse impact on externally financed growth rates. We also find that not all restatements yield identical effects: the impact of restatements is more pronounced for the subsample of firms identified to have undertaken the more egregious fraudulent reporting than the subsample of firms that reported restatements to correct previous accounting errors. We also find that firms with severe restatements, measured based on announcement period market reactions, have lower externally financed growth. Overall, our evidence highlights the adverse impact of restatement on firm growth, particularly through external financing.

Evaluation of Technical Assistance on Bank Supervision by Long-Term Experts in Asia

Technical Assistance Delivery by Long-Term Experts are an increasingly important vehicle for delivering TA in all financial sector areas. In recent years, the amount of MCM TA provided through LTEs has been about 28 staff years annually, or 36 percent of MCM’s total TA field delivery (including RTACs). This share has recently risen as a result of the steady increase in external financing and the cutback in MCM’s own resources for capacity building in the context of the recent downsizing. Indeed, the share of LTEs (who are mostly externally financed) in total planned MCM TA jumped to 41 percent in fiscal year 2009 (May-April). As these factors are expected to persist, the importance of LTEs as a means of delivering TA will likely increase further.

Cross-listing and Firm Growth*

Extant research posits that cross-listing improves firms' access to lower cost external financing. But so far, there is scarce evidence that improved access to external funds through cross-listing contributes to higher firm growth. Documenting the relation between firm growth and cross-listing is critical because the presumption in prior research is that funds raised via cross-listing will be channeled towards potentially profitable projects. Using a sample of firms from thirty-seven countries that are cross-listed in the USA, we find a positive association between cross-listing and subsequent externally financed firm growth rates. However, we do not find that increases in externally financed firm growth after cross-listing vary systematically as a function of the home-country attributes of the cross-listed firms. Overall, our results provide new and direct evidence on the impact of cross-listing on the firm growth rates.

Firm Growth and Disclosure: An Empirical Analysis

AbstractExtant theoretical research posits that information asymmetry and agency issues affect the cost of external financing and hence impact the ability of firms to finance their growth opportunities. In contrast, the literature on disclosure policy posits that expanded and credible disclosure lowers the cost of external financing and improves a firm's ability to pursue potentially profitable projects. An empirical implication is that disclosure can help firms grow by relaxing external financing constraints, thereby allowing capital to flow to positive net present value projects. This paper empirically evaluates this prediction using firm-level data over an 11-year period. As anticipated by theory, we find a positive relation between firm disclosure policy and the externally financed growth rate, after controlling for other influences.

Firm Growth and Disclosure: An Empirical Analysis

Extant theoretical research posits that information asymmetry and agency issues affect the cost of external financing and hence impact firms' ability to finance its growth opportunities. In contrast, the literature on disclosure policy posits that an expanded and credible disclosure lowers the cost of external financing and improves firm's ability to pursue potentially profitable projects. An empirical implication is that disclosure can help firms grow by relaxing external financing constraints, thereby allowing capital to flow to positive NPV projects. This paper empirically evaluates this prediction using firm-level data over an eleven-year period. As anticipated by theory, we find a positive relation between firm disclosure policy and externally financed growth rate, after controlling for other influences.

Law, Finance and Firm Growth

We investigate how differences in legal and financial systems affect firms' use of external financing to fund growth. We show that in countries whose legal systems score high on an efficiency index, a greater proportion of firms use long-term external financing. An active, though not necessarily large, stock market and a large banking sector are also associated with externally financed firm growth. The increased reliance on external financing occurs in part because established firms in countries with well-functioning institutions have lower profit rates. Government subsidies to industry do not increase the proportion of firms relying on external financing.

Law, Finance, and Firm Growth

We investigate how differences in legal and financial systems affect firms' use of external financing to fund growth. We show that in countries whose legal systems score high on an efficiency index, a greater proportion of firms use long‐term external financing. An active, though not necessarily large, stock market and a large banking sector are also associated with externally financed firm growth. The increased reliance on external financing occurs in part because established firms in countries with well‐functioning institutions have lower profit rates. Government subsidies to industry do not increase the proportion of firms relying on external financing.

Credit market imperfections, income distribution, and capital accumulation

This paper builds a model in which the distribution of income matters for capital formation, and uses it to analyze the effects of a simple policy intended to create a more equal distribution of income on the severity of certain credit market imperfections and, through this channel, capital accumulation. A neoclassical growth model is developed in which some capital investment must be externally financed, and external finance is subject to a standard costly state verification (CSV) problem. In particular, some fraction of the population is “capitalists”, who have access to risky but high return capital production technologies. Successful capitalists leave bequests to their offspring, thereby permitting them to internally finance some fraction of their own investment projects. However some external finance is also required. This is provided by “workers” who save out of labor income. As is well known, the greater the capability of capitalists to provide internal finance, the less severe is the CSV problem. Thus bequests mitigate credit market frictions and, in that sense, promote financial market efficiency and capital accumulation. However, they also perpetrate income inequality. The structure is used to show that a policy that taxes the bequests of capitalists, and transfers the proceeds to workers, necessarily reduces the steady state capital stock. Indeed, when this effect is sufficiently strong, these redistributive tax/transfer schemes can reduce the total (wage plus transfer) incomes of workers, as well as their welfare. Thus some simple policies intended to redistribute income can be highly counterproductive.

The Economic Impact of an Externally Financed Loan Program

A loan is considered a purely financial transaction that alters the composition of particular portfolios while leaving the aggregate stock of assets unchanged. Because such a transaction does not of itself generate new production, its dollar value is excluded from the calculation of GNP. It is probably for this reason that the economic significance of lending programs for stabilization purposes has been largely neglected. The transfer payment is similar to the loan in that neither enters the income stream directly, yet the former is considered to have a substantial economic effect.In a development context external financing is thought to be a significant variable for increasing an economy's growth rate. The success of these loans in generating growth is usually measured by comparing the actual growth rate with some desired standard growth rate.