This paper attempts to address a puzzle in China’s investment pattern: despite high aggregate investment and remarkable economic growth, negative net investment is commonly found at the microeconomic level. Using a large firm-level dataset, we test three hypotheses to explain the existence and...

This paper addresses the hotly-debated question: do Chinese firms overinvest? A firm-level dataset of 100,000 firms over the period of 2000-07 is employed for this purpose. We initially calculate measures of investment efficiency, which is typically negatively associated with overinvestment....

We use a panel of over 116,000 Chinese firms of different ownership types over the period 2000-2007 to analyze the linkages between investment in fixed and working capital and financing constraints. We find that those firms characterized by high working capital display high sensitivities of...

This paper uses a dataset of more than 100,000 firms over the period of 2000-07 to assess whether and why Chinese firms overinvest. We find that corporate investment in China has become increasingly efficient over time, which suggests that overinvestment has been declining. However, within all...

This paper examines the role of political affiliation in the extension of trade credit by Chinese firms. Using a dataset of over 70,000 firms over the period 2000-2007, we find that, because they benefit from easier access to short-term external funding, politically affiliated firms can extend...

Financial factors have been found highly important in influencing firms’ real activities and in promoting aggregate growth. Yet, the linkage between finance and firm-level productivity has been overlooked. We fill this gap in the literature using a large panel of Chinese manufacturing firms...

In this paper, we use a panel of 609 UK firms over the period 1980-2000 to test for the existence of a trade credit channel of transmission of monetary policy, and for whether this channel plays an offsetting effect on the traditional credit channel. We estimate error-correction inventory...

Using a panel of 79,841 Chinese firms over the period 2000-2007, we examine the extent to which liquidity constraints affect firms' assets growth. We find that state owned enterprises are not affected, while the availability of internal finance represents a binding constraint for the growth of...

We examine the relationship between the degree of foreign ownership and performance of recipient firms, using a panel of 21,582 Chinese firms over the period 2000-2005. We find that joint-ventures perform better than wholly foreign-owned and purely domestic firms. Although productivity and...