The fast growth of Chinese private sector firms is taken as evidence that informal finance can facilitate firm growth better than formal banks in developing countries. We examine firm financing patterns and growth using a database of twenty-four hundred Chinese firms. While a relatively small...

Using a firm-level survey database covering 48 countries, we investigate how financial and institutional development affects financing of large and small firms. Our database is not limited to large firms but includes small and medium-size firms and data on a broad spectrum of financing sources,...