The Consequence of Societal Secrecy for Financial Constraints
Does the level of societal secrecy aggravate or alleviate access to finance? We explore this question for over 50,000 firms in around 40, predominantly developing, countries, from 2006 to 2015. We find a strong positive relationship between cultural orientation towards secrecy in a country and financial constraints faced by its firms. Our results are robust to several considerations and emphasize the adverse consequence of societal secrecy for perpetuating financing obstacles for firms