Robert E. Carpenter

Is the Growth of Small Firms Constrained by Internal Finance

This paper examines the long-standing theory that the growth of small firms is often constrained by the quantity of internal finance. Under plausible assumptions, when financing constraints are binding, an additional dollar of internal finance should generate slightly more than an additional dollar of growth in assets. This quantitative prediction should not hold for the relatively small number of firms which access external equity. We test these predictions with a panel of more than 1, 600 small firms and find that the growth of most firms is constrained by internal finance. Our results have implications for several different research literatures, including models of firm growth.

Capital Market Imperfections, High-Tech Investment, and New Equity Financing

Highly variable returns, asymmetric information and a lack of collateral should cause small high-tech firms to have poor access to debt. New equity financing has several advantages over debt, but may be costly compared to internal finance. We examine an unbalanced panel of over 2,400 publicly traded US high-tech companies over the period 1981--98. Most small high-tech firms obtain little debt financing. New equity financing, in the form of the initial public offering, is very important and permits a major increase in firm size. After going public, comparatively few firms make heavy use of external finacing. Copyright Royal Economic Society 2002

Financing constraints and inventory investment: a comparative study with high-frequency panel data

This study provides new evidence of the importance of financing constraints for explaining the dramatic cycles in inventory investment. We compare the empirical performance of different financial variables (coverage ratio, cash stocks, and cash flow) used in previous research to test for the presence of financing constraints. The comparison is undertaken in a common framework with an identical sample and high-frequency (quarterly) firm panel data. Cash flow is much more successful than cash stocks or coverage in explaining the facts about inventory investment across firm size, different inventory cycles, and different manufacturing sectors.

Finance constraints or free cash flow

It has long been argued that firms prefer internal to external finance for funding investment. Modern literatures in industrial organization, macroeconomics, and finance argue this preference is caused by information asymmetries. There are, however, important disagreements about the effect of the asymmetries. Asymmetries may lead to binding financing constraints, or they may allow managers to use free cash flow for unprofitable projects. Each model predicts a different relationship between investment and changes in debt finance and this paper estimates this relationship using firm-level data. The principal findings are that both financing constraints and the agency costs of free cash flow affect investment in a manner consistent with a life cycle model of the firm.

Italian Corporate Governance, Investment, and Finance

Italian industrial structure and financial markets have several distinct features. Italian firms are relatively small, few trade publicly and no corporate bond market exists. The limited types of external funds available to Italian firms makes them prone to financing constraints. We examine a panel containing over 1100 Italian firms. We find that firm size does not appear correlated with the severity of financing constraints. We also find that small firms are frequently mature. Our results suggest that young firms face financing constraints, while mature firms may develop relationships with lenders that lower the costs of external funds. Small, young firms appear to face the tightest financing constraints. Many firms are affiliatedwith pyramidal business groups. We find that affiliation with pyramidal businessgroups appears to reduce the effect of financing constraints. Our results haveimportant implications for government policy to promote small firm growth in Italy.

Seasonal Cycles, Business Cycles, and the Comovement of Inventory Investment and Output

The importance of inventory investment in the business cycle is well-known. Its role in the seasonal cycle is less well known. The authors examine the variation of inventory investment and its comovement with output over the seasonal and business cycles. They measure the deterministic and stochastic seasonal components of monthly inventory data and find seasonality contributes about 75 percent of the total variance, similar to the proportion found in GDP. The authors find that inventory investment and output exhibit high correlation, with similar magnitudes, at seasonal and business cycle frequencies. These findings are consistent with the idea that seasonal cycles and business cycles are propagated through similar mechanisms and suggest that inventory investment may play as important a role in the seasonal cycle as it does in the business cycle.