"Although it is widely accepted that financial development is associated with higher growth, the evidence on the channels through which credit affects growth on the micro-level is scant. Using data from a cross section of Bulgarian firms, the authors estimate the impact of access to credit (as...

"The authors study the effect of financial crises on trade credit in a sample of 890 firms in six emerging economies. They find that although provision of trade credit increases right after the crisis, it consequently collapses in the following months and years. The authors observe that 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...

"Using balance sheet information for nearly 6,000 firms between 1994-2003, Love and Martinez Peria investigate recent firm financing patterns in India. They document the overall use of debt and, in particular, the role of bank financing (short-term and long-term), trade credit, intra-business...

The authors study the effect of reorganization costs on the efficiency of bankruptcy laws. They develop a simple model that predicts that in a regime with high costs, the law fails to achieve the efficient outcome of liquidating unviable businesses and reorganizing viable ones. The authors test...

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...