This paper uses a dataset of more than 70,000 firms in over 100 countries to systematically study the use of different financing sources for new and young firms, in comparison to mature firms. The authors find that in all countries younger firms rely less on bank financing and more on informal...

The relationship between the financial, and real sides of the economy has long been a topic of intense interest, and debate. The author provides microeconomic evidence that financial development aids growth, by reducing financing constraints that would otherwise restrict efficient firm...

The authors combine firm-level data from the World Bank Business Environment Survey (WBES) with data on private and public credit registries to investigate whether the presence of a credit registry in a country is associated with lower financing constraints, as perceived by managers, and with...

Although it is widely accepted that financial development is associated with higher growth, the evidence on the channels through which credit affects growth on the micro-level is scant. Using data from a cross section of Bulgarian firms, the authors estimate the impact of access to credit (as...

The authors study the effect of financial crises on trade credit in a sample of 890 firms in six emerging economies. They find that although provision of trade credit increases right after the crisis, it consequently collapses in the following months and years. The authors observe that firms...

The authors apply vector autoregression to firm-level panel data from 36 countries to study the dynamic relationship between firms'financial conditions and investment. They argue that by using orthogonalized impulse-response functions they are able to separate the"fundamental factors"(such as...

Firms often cite financing constraints as one of their primary obstacles to investment. Global capital flows, by bringing in scarce capital, may ease the financing constraints of host country firms. But if incoming foreign investors borrow heavily from domestic banks, foreign direct investment...

Recent empirical work has shown that financial development is important for economic growth, since well-developed financial markets are more effective at allocating capital to firms with high-value projects. This raises the question of whether firms with high return projects in countries with...