Inessa Love

Investor Protection, Ownership, and the Cost of Capital

The authors 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 authors predict that this higher share of insider ownership and the resulting exposure of insiders to higher idiosyncratic risk will result in underinvestment and higher cost of capital. Using firm-level data from 38 countries, the authors provide evidence in support of their theoretical model, showing that the premium for bearing idiosyncratic risk varies between zero and six percent and decreases in the level of outside investor protection. The results of the study imply that policies aimed at strengthening investor protection laws and their enforcement will improve capital allocation and result in higher growth.

Credit Reporting and Financing Constraints

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 higher share of bank financing. They find that the existence of private credit registries is associated with lower financing constraints and higher share of bank financing, while the existence of public credit registries does not seem to have a significant effect on these perceived financing constraints. The authors also find that small- and medium-sized firms tend to have a higher share of bank financing in countries where private registries exist and stronger rule of law is associated with more effective private credit registries. Finally, the authors find some evidence that the presence of a public credit registry benefits younger firms relatively more than older firms.

The Impact of the Financial Crisis on New Firm Registration

The authors use panel data on the number of new firm registrations in 95 countries to study the impact of the business environment and 2008 financial crisis on new firm registration. The data show that more dynamic formal business creation occurs in countries that provide entrepreneurs with a stable legal and regulatory regime, fast and inexpensive business registration process, more flexible employment regulations, and low corporate taxes. The data also show that nearly all countries experienced a sharp drop in business entry during the crisis. This drop is more pronounced in countries with higher levels of financial development and countries more affected by the crisis.

The economic impact of banking the unbanked: evidence from Mexico

This paper examines the effects of providing financial services to low-income individuals on entrepreneurial activity, employment, and income. The analysis exploits cross-time and cross-municipality variation in the opening of Banco Azteca in Mexico to measure these effects with a difference-in-difference strategy. Banco Azteca opened more than 800 branches simultaneously in 2002, focusing on low-income clients. The results show that the opening of Banco Azteca led to an increase in the number of informal business owners by 7.6 percent. Total employment also increased, by 1.4 percent, and average income went up by about 7 percent.

Trade Credit, Bank Credit and Financial Crisis*

This paper examines trade credit behavior in a sample of small and medium enterprises in four East Asian countries before and after the financial crisis of 1998. We use a unique dataset that contains detailed data on trade credit amount and contract terms along with data on access to finance. We find that after the crisis, firms constrained in bank finance receive less trade credit in terms of percent of inputs bought on credit and shorter time of repayment. They also reduce credit extension to their customers in terms of quantity and length of time, due to a smaller pool of available finance. Discount terms rise on both receivables and payables. Our evidence does not support the hypothesis that trade credit can substitute for bank credit in times of the crisis, and instead suggests that liquidity shocks are propagated along the supply chains.

The Impact of Business Environment Reforms on New Firm Registration

This paper uses panel data on the number of new firm registrations in 91 countries to study how the ease of registering a business and the magnitude of registration reforms affect new firm registrations. The authors find that the costs, days and procedures required to start a business are important predictors of the number of new firm registrations. However, they find that small reforms, in general less than a 40 percent reduction in procedures or 50 to 60 percent reduction in costs and days, do not have a significant effect on new registrations. They also find important synergies in multiple reforms of two or more business environment indicators. Finally, they show that countries with relatively weaker business environments prior to reforms require relatively larger reforms in order to impact the number of newly registered firms.

Do reorganization costs matter for efficiency ? Evidence from a bankruptcy reform in Colombia

An efficient bankruptcy system should liquidate nonviable businesses and reorganize viable ones. The importance of this filtering process has long been recognized in the literature; the typical reason advanced for its failure has been biases (in codes or among judges). In this paper we show that bankruptcy costs can be another source of such filtering failure. We illustrate this with the Colombian reform of 1999. Using data from 1,924 firms filing for bankruptcy between 1996 and 2003, we find that the prereform reorganization proceedings were so inefficient that the bankruptcy system failed to separate economically viable firms from inefficient ones. In contrast, by streamlining the reorganization process, the reform contributed to the improvement of the selection of viable firms into reorganization. In this sense, the new law increased the efficiency of the bankruptcy system in Colombia.

What drives corporate governance reform? firm-level evidence from Eastern Europe

The authors study differences in the use of two corporate governance provisions - cumulative voting and proxy by mail voting - in a sample of 224 firms located in four Eastern European countries. Thereport finds a significant relationship between ownership structure, and the use of corporate governance provisions. Firms with a controlling owner (owning more than 50 percent of shares) are less likely to adopt either of the two provisions. However, firms that have large, minority shareholders are more likely to adopt these provisions. The authors do not find any significant relationship between the use of these provisions, and foreign ownership. The results suggest that the decision to adopt these corporate governance provisions is influenced by large, minority shareholders in their battle for representation in the board, and in managerial decisions.

The Impact of Funding Models and Foreign Bank Ownership on Bank Credit Growth: Is Central and Eastern Europe Different?

This paper provides new evidence on the factors affecting protracted credit contraction in the wake of the global financial crisis. The paper applies panel vector autoregressions to a global panel that consists of quarterly data for 41 countries for the period 2000-2011 and documents that domestic private credit growth is highly sensitive to cross-border funding shocks around the world. This relationship is significantly stronger in Central and Eastern Europe, a region with considerably stronger foreign presence, higher cross-border funding, and elevated loan-to-deposit ratios compared with the rest of the world. The paper shows that high foreign ownership per se does not appear to explain credit response differences to foreign funding shocks. Rather, there is a stronger response in countries that exhibit high loan-to-deposit ratios and a high reliance on foreign funding relative to local deposits. The results suggest that funding model differences were at the heart of the post-crisis credit contraction in several Central and Eastern European countries. These findings have important regulatory and supervisory implications for emerging countries in Central and Eastern Europe as well as for other countries.

Finances of Egyptian Listed Firms

The author presents an analysis of the finances of Egyptian listed companies evaluating recent trends in growth and profitability during the 1995-2001 period. The data from financial statements reveal the effect of the economic slowing of the past few years, especially in the construction and real estate sectors and especially in smaller companies. She finds that smaller firms appear to be less profitable and experience lower growth, likely because of being particularly adversely affected by many of the sources of the high costs of doing business in Egypt. While the Egyptian firms are not very highly leveraged on average, she finds that smaller firms have significantly less access to bank finance than larger firms do. This confirms the widely held view that there is a need to improve the availability of credit for small enterprises.