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This paper investigates the causal effect of green credit regulation policy on green productivity and revisits the Porter hypothesis. By separating R&D into environmentally induced R&D and production R&D, we find that green credit regulation policy significantly improves green total factor productivity (GTFP) growth rather than input-output TFP. We further show that environmentally induced R&D is the driver of GTFP, while production R&D significantly improves the input-output TFP. Finally, our estimations indicate that internal financing intermediation is used to finance environmental R&D projects due to the high cost of environmental innovation.

This paper empirically examines how real estate risk impacts corporate investment and financing decisions. Using a panel of United States firms from 1985 to 2013, we document that real estate risk is negatively associated with firms’ long-term investments and long-term external financing in equity and debt. The results are robust to different risk measurements and in particular salient during the financial crisis period when the endogeneity between risk and investment is less of a concern. The effect on firm leverage, however, depends on risk measures. Overall, in contrast to previously documented positive effects of the real estate value, real estate risk exposure exhibits mostly the opposite effects on investment, financing and capital structure. This difference is consistent with option value determinants. Findings in this paper shed new lights on the impact of real estate holding on corporate decisions, offer a new explanation for the underperformance of hedge funds’ real estate strategies, and confirm the theoretical predictions in Deng et al. (2015).

This study examines the impact of financing conditions on firm behavior in the Gulf zone over the period 2005–2014 using a panel of 357 firms. As a main consequence of market frictions, financing constraints have sizeable impacts on how CFOs behave and design their financial policies. We use a sample of firms from the six GCC countries and specify a range of investment equations to explore the behavior of cash flow sensitivities to fixed investment, working capital, and R&D. Our results show that GCC firms seem to have less costly financing sources when financing their inventories and/or holding cash than investing in fixed assets and R&D. Our results indicate that there is heterogeneity of the impact of financing conditions on the behavior of GCC firms. The Omani and Bahraini firms seem to be more oriented toward building their working capital during periods of financial distress in order to finance their fixed and R&D investments. This behavior does not seem to be consistent with the other count...

We investigate the financing decisions of Korean firms during the period of 1996–2015. Korean firms follow a matching strategy for funding their cash needs. Cash inflows from investing activities a...

This study aimed to examine whether an optimal investment level exists in hotel firms. The authors examined the quadratic relation between investments and hotel firm value. The results show that there is an optimal investment level that maximizes firm value. However, the optimal investment level varies across firms on the basis of the quality of investment opportunities or under- and overinvestment problems. The optimal investment level is higher for hotel firms with underinvestment problems, which suggests that these firms have valuable investment opportunities. However, the optimal investment level is lower for hotel firms with overinvestment problems, which implies that shareholders of these firms perceive additional investments to be value destroying. These results support the postulations of the Q theory of investment, pecking order theory, and free cash flow theory. Practical implications are discussed in the realm of financing, investment, and dividend policies.

Capital structure determination is considered as one of the key corporate financing decisions and managers often face difficulty in finding the optimal one. There are various theories regarding this phenomenon in the finance literature and this issue has been discussed since long. No theory can be regarded as the conclusive one as varying evidences found regarding this complex issue. Presently, the need to determine an optimal capital structure has become more troublesome as well as important due to the emergence of a need of the best corporate governance practices. To mitigate agency problem, the organizations may implement code of corporate governance. This study aims to investigate about the impact of corporate governance on capital structure determination. Secondly, this study focuses on three well known capital structure theories i.e. trade-off theory, agency theory and pecking-order theory. Quantitative research design is used for this empirical study. Sample consists of panel data of the non-financial sector companies listed at Pakistan Stock Exchange for five years 2009-2013. The data of the variables of interest are collected from annual reports published by companies and the publications of State Bank of Pakistan. The companies are selected by taking a representative sample from the whole non-financial sector. Stratified Random Sampling technique is used by taking 10% of each sector and final selected firms are 40.Then, simple random sampling technique is used for the selection of a representative sample by using random number method. Panel data analysis and Hausman test reveal that fixed effects model is better than other options and Board size has a significant impact on Debt to equity ratio in positive direction in case of Pakistani firms operating in nonfinancial sector. We may infer that Pakistani firms have positive relationship between managerial ownership and capital structure. Since this relationship is insignificant in all regressions. The negative relationship of return on assets (ROA) and debt to equity ratio suggests that Pakistani firms earn higher returns on assets and such firms rely more on internal financing resulting in less use of debt, strong negative association has been found between liquidity and debt to equity whereas the relationship with firm size is observed negative as well as insignificant. The findings of this study can help to policy makers to give importance to Board size as it is an important determinant of capital structure as larger the size of board is, the better the monitoring and decision making process

The innovation of supply chain financial services can alleviate the plight of SMEs financing difficulties. In the aspect of supply chain finance model, there is a credit guarantee financing model, which is different from the simple external financing and internal financing mode of supply chain. Based on this, this paper studies the decision-making of supply chain finance under the partial credit guarantee of core enterprises. First of all, the paper constructs a simple supply chain financing model, consisting of a bank, a core enterprise and a retailer. And then, considering the credit guarantee financing model, calculate the expected profit function. Stackelberg game model is used to give the optimal decision of each subject in decentralized system and the optimal decision in centralized system. Finally, in order to make a more specific and detailed study on the profit and decision-making based on the credit guarantee financing model, the important parameters of the model are analyzed. Through the calculation, it is proved that under the credit guarantee of the core enterprise, the retailer has the optimal ordering strategy, and the core enterprise has the best wholesale price. The influences of the partial credit guarantee coefficient and the retailer’s loan coefficient on the supply chain finance decision-making are also studied.

This study models firm’s financing policy and investment level when manager and outside investors has disagreement. It shows that the firm is more likely to over invest when the level of disagreement is high, and prefers debt financing; while under invests with lower disagreement level and tends to equity financing. Compared with self-financing, investment at firm level decreases, the over (under) investment level also declines and the threshold of disagreement rises when the firm chooses external financing. The numerical simulation also verifies the theoretical findings.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the main determinants of growth in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in India. The empirical research has suggested that firm growth is determined not only by the traditional characteristics of size and age but also by other firm-specific factors such as indebtedness, internal financing, future growth opportunities, process and product innovation, and organisational changes. No empirical evidence has been provided so far on which of these determining factors are associated with SMEs growth and performance in India. Using a panel dataset of 560 fast growing small and medium enterprises from India the author finds evidence that firm size and age can explain to a large extend the growth in SMEs in India. Firm specific characteristics such as short-term liquidity, future growth opportunities, internally generated funds, and factor productivity are found to be important factors in determining a firm's growth and performance. Economy-wide factors such as inflation and corporate income tax rate (but not gross domestic product) seem to have a significant effect on SMEs growth in India.

Our research intends to identify the pecking order theory implementation and both the internal and external factors influencing the companies' debt policy on a sample of 65 companies in Serbia during 2015. The answers were provided by 65 CFOs. The results obtained from the survey indicate that most respondents are inclined to use internal funds, as opposed to external funds. Further analysis of external sources used by the firms in the sample suggests that firms are mostly inclined to use bank loans (59%), leasing (26%), debt securities (8%) and finally equity securities (4%). The results show that the most dominant internal factors influencing the debt policy of the companies in the sample are credit rating of the company and financial slack. And finally, the results indicate that the restrictive and costly credit policy of the banks in Serbia influence the companies' access to external financial means.

At present, the financing of small and medium-sized enterprises in China’s market economy has caused great concern of the whole society. Small and medium-sized enterprises financing difficulties directly affect our country to complete the “public entrepreneurship, people’s innovation” goal. There are many reasons for the financing difficulties of SMEs, such as the small and medium-sized enterprise’s financing characteristics, the state of small and medium-sized enterprise service system construction, financial institutions and credit evaluation mechanism of our country enterprise credit system etc. This paper argues that there are three reasons for the financing difficulties of SMEs: The first is the asymmetry of information between the two sides of the credit; secondly, the cost of the loan is huge. Finally, it is difficult to control credit risk. Therefore, in order to solve the problem of financing, we should focus on three aspects: Credit information, cost reduction and risk control. Internet banking model is not a traditional bank indirect financing model, nor is it a direct financing model on the capital market, but a multiagency cooperation to complete a new financing model. This model is convenient and rapid; it provides a feasible way to solve the financing difficulties of small and medium-sized enterprises, which can greatly improve the current financing environment.

This paper studies the life-cycle profiles of small firms’ cost and use of credit using a panel of Finnish firms. The choice of method matters for the conclusions drawn about the relationship between firm age and financing costs; the cross-sectional age profiles of financing costs are hump-shaped and consistent with hold-up theories, whereas methods that control for cohort fixed effects demonstrate that the financing costs decrease monotonically as the firms mature. The life-cycle profiles of the use of credit also indicate that firms are more dependent on financial intermediaries in the early periods of their lives. Furthermore, the cohorts born during recessions pay higher financing costs and use smaller amounts of bank loans, even after their creditworthiness is controlled for. The recession cohort effect appears to be more related to the experience of starting-up the firm in the recession than to the CEOs growing up in a recession during their early adulthood.

Using the data of Chinese listed companies from 2012 to 2014, this paper empirically tests the relationship between managerial overconfidence and corporate R & D investment in the context of financing constraints by the method of multiple regression analysis, and further tests the impact of ownership type on the relationship. We find that: 1) Compared with the companies with weak financing constraints, the positive relationship between managerial overconfidence and corporate R & D investment in the companies with strong financing constraints is stronger; 2) In the context of strong financing constraints, compared with the state-owned companies, the positive relationship between managerial overconfidence and corporate R & D investment in the non-state-owned companies is stronger.

The aim of this article is to present and compare two basic sources of financing of physical investments in the corporate sector, i.e. internal finance and bank finance, and to discuss their determinants. Research methodology – The article presents the review of reference literature and applies the methodology, developed by C. Mayer, that uses the flows of funds instead of their balances, correcting the gross sources of finance by their use in order to estimate a net contribution from banks, equity capital, commercial papers, trade credits, and other instruments to the financing of the corporate sector. Outcome – The outcome of the analysis comprises the conclusions on the use of the sources of internal and bank finance for physical investments in the corporate sector in Poland and in Hungary. Originality/value – The issues discussed in the study and the comparative analysis of the two basic sources of finance in the corporate sectors in Poland and in Hungary contribute to the discussion on the financing of corporate development.

Through a review of three public transport projects developed across the United States using tax increment financing (TIF) revenues, this article examines the robustness of state- and local-level enabling statutes and the strategies used to minimize TIF’s horizontal and vertical inequities. The article finds that although TIF is widely used to fund transit-related facilities, such as rail lines and train stations, it is not used to purchase or maintain the rolling stock (e.g., train cars and buses). Furthermore, the use of TIF revenues for public transport enhances vertical equity to the extent that public transit users are likely to have lower incomes than auto users. However, in all case study projects, TIF primarily helped develop rail projects, not bus systems, with the latter more likely to be used by lower income people. Finally, setting aside TIF funds for affordable housing, job training, and relocation and rehabilitation can help reduce vertical inequities.

Using Indonesian Islamic banking data from 2003 to 2014, this article employs a panel regression methodology to investigate the responses of Islamic banks to changes in financing rates and monetary policy, which may differ depending on their characteristics. The results suggest that the financing rate has a negative impact on financing at Islamic banks, while bank-specific characteristics have a positive influence on it. The size and amount of capital have a greater impact than liquidity on financing at Islamic banks. However, changes in monetary policy are insignificant on bank financing, which implies that the transmission of monetary policy through the Islamic segment of the banking sector is weak. Furthermore, the weak impact of monetary policy on bank financing can be explained by the dramatic expansion of Islamic banks during the sample period, which contributed to a substantial increase in deposit growth and a high liquidity position.

US data display aggregate external financing and savings waves. Firms can allocate costly external finance to productive capital, or to liquid assets with low physical returns. If firms raise costly external finance and accumulate liquidity, either the cost of external finance is relatively low or the total return to liquidity accumulation, including its shadow value as future internal funds, is particularly high. We formalize this intuition by estimating a dynamic model of firms׳ financing and savings decisions, and use our model along with firm level data to construct an empirical estimate of the average cost of external finance from 1980 to 2014.

This paper examines the impact of fiscal deficit and its financing pattern on private corporate sector investment in India, for the period from 1970–1971 to 2012–2013. Using Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) Models, the study finds that fiscal deficit crowds out private investment both in the long run and in the short run. The results also show that internal (domestic) financing of fiscal deficit has significant negative impact on private investment but external (foreign) financing of fiscal deficit has insignificant effect. In the short run, availability of bank credit plays a more important role in investment decision making than the rate of interest in India. The study suggests that government should maintain the fiscal deficit within a sustainable level by reducing its unnecessary non-developmental expenditure, subsidies etc. The government should restructure its financing pattern of fiscal deficit since internal financing has a significant negative impact on private investment.

The difference between social and private returns to education often provides the rationale for government intervention. We assess the growth implications of alternative methods of financing public spending on education in a small open economy. We develop a multisector endogenous growth model with human capital accumulation and consider several fiscal instruments to finance the increase in government spending: transfers to households, output, capital and labor taxes. We find a significant difference in the growth impact generated by the choice of the financing method. The non-distortionary financing method provides the highest output increase through its strong effect on physical and human capital stocks. The other distortionary financing methods have lower impacts on long-run economic growth, with labor tax being the most performing. Our simulation results also suggest that even though all methods of financing considered in this paper are growth-inducing in the long-run, their transitional impacts differ.

Using a large firm-level panel dataset from the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics, we examine the effect of financial distortions on FDI inflows in China's labor-intensive industries. Following Whited and Wu (2006), we estimate the investment Euler equation and construct a financing constraint index for each firm. We find that among domestic firms, the financing constraint index is highest for private firms and lowest for state-owned firms. This finding is consistent with the political pecking order hypothesis that states that there is a severe lending bias in China's financial system against private firms in favor of state-owned enterprises. Then we estimate a probit model of joint-venture decisions by private firms. We show that firms with greater financing constraints are more likely to be acquired and controlled by foreign firms. We interpret this evidence to be consistent with the fire-sale hypothesis that states that private firms relinquish their equity and control to foreign investors in order to raise financing for growth. We find that those firms in the top 25 percent of the most financing constraints could have avoided losing 31.5 percent of the equity share to foreigners had they faced the same favorable financing constraints as a typical firm in Zhejiang Province.

Musharakah Tijarah Cross-Border Financing (“Product”) is the product to enable the Bank to undertake project and contract cross-border financing activities or other identified business ventures on “pure” Joint Venture basis, using the underlying Islamic financing contract of Musharakah. Musharakah concept has a low market share of less than 2.5% in the overall existing Islamic financing products in Malaysia. This product encourages mobilization of idle capital / cash entities and thus provides a basis for economic cooperation between these organizations in the society. The product also is expected to inject greater prosper to the Bank’s overall performance and ultimately able to assist small time landowners in a big way through business risk sharing. Musharakah provides an alternative investment, which will cater for Islamic investors and partners, especially from GCC, who may have been reluctant to invest in conventional or current debt-based financing scheme. With Musharakah concept, the most preferred and globally accepted Islamic financing, this can attract these investors to participate on similar risk-sharing arrangements through the creation of Specific Investment Account (SIA) or Islamic Syndication to back financing made into the Joint Venture.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of social capital of non-resident family members on small business debt financing. Recent literature in entrepreneurship suggests that small businesses can borrow social capital to improve their access to debt financing. Design/methodology/approach Micro-entrepreneurs from India were interviewed regarding their ability to raise capital from family members as well as their relationship with banks and politicians. Findings The survey indicates that small business entrepreneurs are able to borrow social capital from non-resident Indians. Results also suggest that these small businesses are more likely to be connected to banks and politicians facilitated by their non-resident family members, which not only improves micro-entrepreneurs’ access to debt financing but also reduces their cost of borrowing. Research limitations/implications This is a co-relational study that investigates the association between social capital of non-resident family members and small business debt financing. There is not necessarily a causal relationship between the two. The findings of this study may only be generalized to firms similar to those that were included in this research. Originality/value This study contributes to the literature on the factors that improve the access to small business debt financing. The findings may be useful for financial managers, investors, financial management consultants, entrepreneurs, and other stakeholders.

This article investigates the effects of financial systems on enterprise restructuring in twenty-six transition economies from 1999 to 2005. It identifies various sources of financing and estimates their respective impacts on enterprise restructuring. Loans from local commercial banks are found to be more effective than any other form of financing at promoting restructuring. Their effect increases as the size of the firm decreases. There is some evidence that the effectiveness of equity financing in restructuring increases over time, suggesting that the equity mechanism takes root in transition economies only gradually. It is also found that restructuring contributes to firm performance, suggesting a linkage among financing sources, restructuring, and firm performance.

SMEs are drivers of economic growth and job creation in developing countries. It is paramount to determine the factors that hinder their growth. This paper uses the Enterprise Survey from the World Bank which covers data from 119 developing countries to investigate the biggest obstacles SMEs are confronting and the determinants that influence the obstacles as perceived by enterprise managers. The results show that SMEs perceive access to finance as the most significant obstacle which hinders their growth. The key determinants among firms' characteristics are size, age and growth rate of firms as well as the ownership of the firm. The latter – the role of the state in financing SME – is particularly intriguing. External reasons for the financing dilemma are also examined. It is shown that the main barriers to external financing are high costs of borrowing and a lack of consultant support.

This study investigates whether small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) policy funds in South Korea are effective in reducing financing constraints faced by the SMEs. We find that investment-cash flow sensitivity decreases after public loans are granted, and furthermore that this decrease in the sensitivity is greater for younger and smaller firms. These results are consistent with the certification effects hypothesis.

Islamic banks should share their profits and losses with their customers through equity financing but most of their assets are mark-up financing, which resembles loans. Theoretically, one of the reasons is Islamic banks operate in poor contracting environments where equity financing is very risky. Using fixed-effects models, we examine whether better contracting environments induce Islamic banks to shift from mark-up to equity financing. We find no evidence that contracting environments do, which means debt-like instruments will continue dominating Islamic banks’ assets in the near future.

Financial flexibility helps improve firm performance. By using data from Chinese listed companies, we examine whether investment scale or investment efficiency drives the relationship between financial flexibility and firm performance via a special mediator testing method that is widely used in the psychology literature (Baron and Kenny, 1986). We find that financial flexibility has a significant and positive effect on both investment and firm performance. However, investment scale rather than investment efficiency seems to drive firm performance. This finding helps us understand that Chinese companies tend to emphasize investment expansion more than they do investment efficiency to improve firm performance.

Addressing the financing gap for renewable energy (RE) projects in Asia is critical to ensure that the rapidly increasing energy needs could be met sustainably. This paper explores the cause of the financing gap in Asia and proposes the use of bond financing to address the financing gap. Specifically, three fixed income instruments, namely local currency denominated (LCY) corporate bonds, asset backed project bonds and financial green bonds, will be assessed. Whilst the potential for these three instruments to mobilize large flows of private sector financing is great, key supportive policies aimed at reducing the capital market bias for conventional power generation technologies and supportive RE policies are required. Another key aspect would be the necessary deepening of local and regional fixed income markets before such capital market instruments are able to play a big role.

RD independent variables that are allowed to be endogenous, meaning that they are correlated with past and possibly current realizations of the error; fixed effects; and heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation within subjects. We present our findings in three categories. First, we find evidence that R&D investments are positively related to cash flow, implying that R&D investments is sensitive to the availability of cash flow, which financially constrains corporate R&D activities due to imperfect capital markets and unique characteristics of R&D investments. Second, cash holdings and trade credit are found to have insignificant impacts on R&D investments, suggesting that Korean firms are not engaged in R&D smoothing through cash holdings and/or trade credit when they temporarily experience cash shortage. Finally, for external financing we show that R&D investments are affected by debt financing, but not by equity financing in Korean firms. In the absence of equity issues for R&D activities, policymakers might want to consider stock market to take active roles in funding R&D activities when R&D investment demand outstrips internal financing.

How does international competition originating from low-wage countries affect domestic financing capacity of firms in high-wage countries? In this article, we use China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) as a quasi-natural experiment to investigate the effects of trade-induced competition originating from China on the price and design of bank-loan contracts for firms in US manufacturing industries. We find that the elevated level of Chinese import competition in the US, following China’s WTO entry, is associated with a reduction in the overall cost of bank financing for import-competing US manufacturing firms, evidenced by lower spread, higher amount, longer maturity, and less restrictive non-price contract terms such as collateral and covenants. We show that such reduction in the external financing premiums of import-competing firms is the result of trade-induced productivity gains within firms and a reallocation of financing between firms towards more capital-intensive and technologically advanced firms. These results suggest that engaging in international business activities with a low-wage country via trade openness is likely to ease the provisions of external debt financing for firms in high-wage countries.

In the wake of increasing outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) from India, their financing in the form of intra-company loans and equity is an interesting area of research. This paper examines the determinants of OFDI financing by Indian parent firm to its affiliates abroad. Using disaggregated analysis of 66 countries where Indian parent firms have invested over the period of March 2009 to March 2014, the paper analyses the impact of economic, political, legal and financial environment including stock market development on the financing decision of Indian parent firms. By applying random effects probit model, we find that the financial and legal environment have a significant bearing on their financing decision. This paper is first of its kind to explore the relatively unexplored link between host country’s characteristics on the nature of funds invested by parent firm in its foreign affiliate. By focusing on parent debt, we move into the realm of internal capital market of the parent firm in...

This study explores whether or not the geography characteristics of a firm's headquarters location affect the firm's credit risk in a geographically small and culturally homogeneous country by employing firm location data in Taiwan from the year 2005 to 2011. Empirical results of this study show that rural firms have higher credit risk than urban firms. In addition, the firm location effect is mainly through the channels of incomplete information and financial leverage. Moreover, the study also finds that a firm's market-debt financing distance is positively associated with its credit risk while the firm's banking-debt financing distance has insignificant effect.

Girişimciliğin finansmanı ile ilgili literatür incelendiğinde bir finansman modeli olarak öne çıkan kavram risk sermayesidir. Gelişmiş ülkelerde uzun zamandır başarı ile uygulanan risk sermayesi; dinamik, yaratıcı ve yenilikçi, finansman gücü yeterli olmayan her aşamadaki girişimcilerin yatırım fikirlerini gerçekleştirmelerine olanak sağlayan, aynı zamanda yönetim, pazarlama ve işletme desteği de veren modern bir finansman modelidir. Ancak, Türkiye'de, henüz tam anlamıyla bilinmediğinden ve risk sermayesi teşviklerinin yetersizliğinden dolayı sınırlı sayıda uygulama imkanı bulmuştur. Çalışmanın kapsamı doğrultusunda, risk sermayesi finansmanı alanında Türkiye'deki uygulamaların karşılaştırması yapılmış, ekonomi üzerindeki etkileri incelenmiş, risk sermayesi finansman modelinin girişimleri tetikleyici önemi vurgulanmış, sürdürülebilirlik açısından etkileri üzerinde durulmuş, risk sermayesinin tarafları ve yasa koyucular açısından süreçlerin iyileştirilmesi konusunda öneriler getirilmiştir. The prominent concept of venture capital is examined as a financing model to the financing of entrepreneurship according to related literature. Venture capital is used with success in developed countries for a long time. Venture capital is a modern financing model that allows entrepreneurs to perform dynamic, creative, and innovative investment ideas as well as management, marketing and business support without requesting financial strength from those entrepreneurs. However, venture capital has found the limited number of application and has not yet fully known in Turkey due to the lack of incentives. In line with the scope of the study, venture capital financing practices in Turkey is compared, and the impact of these practices on the economy is investigated. This study is highlighted how venture capital financing model triggers initiatives. The study is also focused on the impact of venture capital in terms of sustainability. At last, some recommendations are given on improving the processes in terms of venture capital parties and legislators.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine in greater depth the concept of “board capital”, which the authors consider to be a bundle of three types of capital, and believe to be a clear antecedent of the board’s ability to perform its roles, which have positive consequences for the firm’s performance. Design/methodology/approach Through 83 firms listed on The Madrid Stock Exchange during the period 2005-2010, the authors test empirically the relationships between different dimensions of board capital and firm performance, and specially how internal social capital moderates the relationships between board human capital and external social capital with firm performance. Findings The results show that certain characteristics of human capital (average board tenure) and external social capital (directors’ interlocks) are positively related to the firm performance. The empirical findings also indicate that the internal social capital, measured by board density, is positively related to the firm performance and moderates these above relationships, increasing the potential of the resources contributed by the board members and influencing to a large extent on a firm’s performance. Practical implications The results of the investigation will help both executives and scholar in two ways. First, they will assist firms when they have to select board members, as they can now understand how the resources that board members bring with them can affect the firm performance. To be more effective, boards need to have members that have experience as firm’s directors, external connections to other boards and many internal ties among them. Second, in this context, internal social capital is especially relevant, so the firms should look for possible ways of encouraging internal ties between directors. In this paper, the authors have opted for study the participation of directors in committees. Originality/value The authors propose that these three types of capital (human, external and internal social capital) need to be synergistically combined to create a group of directors with access to a complete set of skills, knowledge and connections, but which can still work as a compact social group when making decisions.

We identify that the cost of external capital and the frontier technology (FT) shock level are two important factors affecting external capital supply. We explore how they interact to affect the investment financing of organizational capital (OC). We show that the FT shock level has experienced a dramatic change from being counter-cyclical before 1991 to pro-cyclical after 1991. This structural break alters the OC investment sensitivities during the two sub-periods. We find that the OC investment-cash flow sensitivity is low and the OC investment-q sensitivity is high only when the cost of external capital is low and the FT shock level is simultaneously high. These patterns are mainly driven by financially constrained firms. In addition, our empirical findings suggest that OC investments made during recessions when the FT shock level is also low generate higher productivity than in other conditions.

In recent years, bank credit business is booming with the increasing borrowing intention of China’s listed companies, and debt financing has become the major approach among listed companies’ financing strategies. As a series of institutional arrangements about rights, responsibilities and benefits between different shareholders, corporate governance mechanism has a significant influence on the cost of debt financing. This paper employs variable coefficient panel data model to investigate the relationship of the listed company’s debt financing costs and corporate governance mechanism in terms of structural characteristics and time series characteristics. The results show that optimizing the structure of both Board of Directors and Board of Supervisors, establishing a reasonable management incentive system and reducing the concentration of ownership properly can directly contribute to a lower company’s debt financing costs. Meanwhile, property rights have an interactive influence on corporate governance from four aspects, which indirectly effect in company’s debt financing costs.

Private firms in China have led the explosive growth of the country’s economy, but with restricted or no access to formal financing. It is puzzling that these firms use relatively less trade credit than their counterparts in developed countries. We argue that firms with more growth opportunities should rely mainly on internal financing owing to high asymmetric information, especially in a financial market environment biased towards state-owned enterprises (SOEs) such as China. To explore growth opportunities, these firms may reduce their level of trade credit in the trade-off they face in deciding where to invest. Using panel data of Chinese non-financial listed firms for the period 2003–2013, we find that the relationship between growth opportunities and trade credit (both accounts receivable and payable) is significantly negative and is more pronounced in private firms than in SOEs. Furthermore, we also find that subsequent to the new receivable pledge policy being introduced, Chinese firms with...

This article examines the reasons some countries favor bank-based financial systems and others favor markets-based financial systems. We show that when societies are more accepting of ambiguity—and by extension are more trusting—market financing is favored over relationship-based collateral financing by banks.

In spite of high importance of information technology (IT) investments, managers do not have sufficient guidelines to formulate IT investment strategy of a firm. In this paper, we review the literature to determine the factors that influence the IT investment strategy. The concept of IT investment strategy so far considered two domains: intensity and proactiveness; we enhance this concept by adding the domain of investment focus. Through this review, we made an attempt to answer three strategic questions related to IT investments: (i) level of investment that a firm should make in IT, that is, investment intensity; (ii) areas of firm where these investments should be more focused, that is, investment focus; and (iii) timing of investment, that is, whether to be an early mover in adopting IT or whether to invest relatively late compared to competitors.

This paper attempts to explain what drives the US gross fixed capital formation at the aggregate level. The focus of this paper is the role of the cost of capital and the importance of the type of financing. While the bulk of the investment literature concentrates on company level Tobin's q to explain company level investment, we calculate an aggregate Tobin's q for the US non-farm, non-financial corporate sector to analyze how the cost of capital, dividends and leverage affect the relationship between investment and ‘ q ’. Our findings challenge the concept that the type of financing of new capital is irrelevant to the investment process.

This paper explores a variety of effects of external financing subdivided into bank loans and bond and stock issues on the technology innovation activity (TIA) of Korean listed firms for the full sample period of 1st January 2000 to 31st December 2008. We find evidence that indirect external financing of bank loans makes a negative impact on TIA of the Korean firms whereas direct external financing of security issues does a positive one on it. The results support the hypothesis of manager discretion that banks' conservative lending criteria demanding considerable collaterals from firms discourage managers from an investment in TIA with high risk-high return while external financing via security issues grants managers more discretion for their TIA. This study building up the prior literature that primarily devote to an effect of internal financing on TIA of firms provides firm managers or academic researchers with valuable implications for evaluation of various impacts and roles of external financing in association with financing decisions for TIA of firms.

The financial manager faces two basic problems: first, the firm’s investment or capital budgeting decision, and second, the financing decision. Capital investment and financing decisions are typically analyzed independently. Capital budgeting criteria proceeds under the simplest possible assumption about financing, namely all-equity financing. The only link between investment and financing decisions is the cost of capital. The basic idea behind Modigliani and Miller’s famous proposition I is that in perfect markets, changes in capital structure do not affect value. As long as the total cash flow generated by the firm’s assets is unchanged by capital structure, value is independent of capital structure. This paper is the first attempt to prove that leverage affects the mathematical structures of the cash flow of financing, and that different mathematical structures of financing cash flows may change the total cash flows generated by the firm or the project, thus altering the value of the firm even in perfect markets. The purpose of this paper is to explore the validity of the separation rule through net present value (NPV) and internal rate of return (IRR) rules, as representatives of academic and business practice, and compare their results with simulations that will include the financial decision of the firm. A singular experiment proving that we can change the IRR or NPV of an investment modifying the financial structure cannot be used to affirm a universal statement, but it can be used to show that a theory is wrong.

This paper is the first to examine the asymmetric effects of financing deficits and surpluses on the pecking order financing strategies in sub-Saharan Africa. Panel data estimation techniques are carried out on a sample of 564 non-financial firms for the years 2006 to 2014. Overall, the individual country analysis reveals that equity tracks the financing deficit better than debt for firms with financing deficits. However, the categorical analysis shows that firms operating in the weakest legal environments appear to follow pecking order financing strategies. A steady decline in the magnitude of the pecking order coefficient is observed as we progress from the weakest to the strongest legal systems. In addition, significant differences in the pecking order behaviour for firms with surpluses and deficits are observed in the upper and lower categories of banking and stock market development.