Comparing financial systems: a structural analysis

This paper builds a model of investment and financing that incorporates heterogeneous firms into general equilibrium. In order to characterize the financial structure of an economy, the model connects the share of market finance in total external finance and the distribution of firm sizes into a simple structural equation, with parameters related to the cost of market finance (compared to intermediated finance). We estimate the relative cost of market finance across countries with data on external financing and firm sizes from France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. Using the structural model, we propose an explanation of the empirical correlation across countries between estimated financing costs and the characteristics of the population of firms based on welfare maximization.