This paper is intended as a survey of the effects of taxation and asymmetric information on the financing choice of the firm. The literature on taxation posits a straightforward relationship between the pretax cost of funds and the required return on an investment project to cover the cost of...

Recent literature suggests that because investment expenditures are irreversible and can be delayed, they may be highly sensitive to uncertainty. The authors briefly summarize the theory, stressing its empirical implications. Then, using cross-section and time-series data for a set of developing...

Does financial development translate into a comparative advantage in industries that use more external finance? The author uses industry-level data on firms'dependence on external finance for 36 industries and 56 countries to examine this question. The author shows that countries with...

The authors investigate capital structures in a sample of the largest publicly traded firms in ten developing countries - Brazil, India, Jordan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan, Thailand, Turkey, and Zimbabwe - for 1980 - 91. The firms in the sample are smaller than comparable...

Programs to direct credit to industry can be uniquely beneficial if 1) the purpose of government credit is to relax borrowing constraints on firms, as an end in itself, or (2) other government objectives can best be achieved by relaxing firms'borrowing constraints (in which case, product and...

The author analyzes the financial system's role in economic growth and stability, addressing several core policy issues associated with financial sector reform in emerging economies. He studies finance's role in the context of a circuit model, with interacting rational, forward-looking,...

Common wisdom among post-socialist reformers has beento use voucher investment funds to provide the corporate governance needed to restructure newly privatized enterprises after mass privatization efforts. The idea has been that mass privatization would spread the ownership too wide and make...

The authors of this paper use simple statistical methods to measure the effect of adjustment lending (AL) on economic performance. Using eight economic indicators, they rely on traditional"before-after"comparisons of AL recipients and a control group of 62 countries. How have countries under...

The authors argue that non-financial firms act as intermediaries, by channeling short-term funds from the financial institutions in an economy, to their best use. Non-financial firms act in this way because they may have a comparative advantage in exploiting informal means of ensuring that...

Explanations of the causes of the Asian crisis have focused on macroeconomic factors leading to the crisis. This paper offers a complementary corporate distress perspective linking the crisis to corporate finances. Key ratios for companies in various countries are presented in the paper. The...