This paper documents some stylized facts about Canadian banking. I explore these empirical facts in the context of the Canadian financial legislation. I find that, over the 1990s, Canadian businesses became more heavily dependent on financial markets as their primary source of external funding....

The paper examines the interpretation of firms' investment-cash flow sensitivity as an artifact of financial market imperfection. Two alternative explanations of the financial constraints are compared. One is based on informational problems (asymmetric information). The other focuses on limited...