This paper uses two recently completed surveys of individual entrepreneurs (farmers and microentrepreneurs) and registered enterprises (agricultural and nonagricultural) operating in Mexico’s rural sector to provide new evidence about the factors influencing the incidence of credit constraints...

Himmelberg, Hubbard, and Love combine the agency theory of the firm with risk diversification incentives for insiders. Principal-agent problems between insiders and outsiders force insiders to retain a larger share in their firm than they would under a perfect risk diversification strategy. The...

We investigate the cost of capital in a model with an agency conflict between inside managers and outside shareholders. Inside ownership reflects the classic tradeoff between incentives and risk diversification, and the severity of agency costs depends on a parameter representing investor...

In this paper we study the relationship between firm age, the use of external finance and new investment decisions, in a sample of European firms. We find that younger firms use less bank financing than older firms only in non-EU countries, suggesting that greater financial development and a...

This paper uses two recently completed surveys of individual entrepreneurs (farmers and microentrepreneurs) and registered enterprises (agricultural and nonagricultural) operating in Mexico s rural sector to provide new evidence about the factors influencing the incidence of credit constraints...