The authors investigate whether integration with global markets affects the financing choices of firms from East Asia and Latin America. Using firm-level data for the 1980s and 1990s, they study how leverage ratios, the structure of debt maturity, and sources of financing change when economies...

The author uses panel data on 394 firms in 13 developing countries for the years 1988-98 to learn whether financial liberalization relaxes financing constraints on firms. He finds that liberalization affects small and large firms differently. Small firms are financially constrained before...

The authors analyze the relationship between the development and asset allocation of contractual savings and firms' capital structures. The authors develop a simple model of firms' leverage and debt maturity decisions. They illustrate the mechanisms through which contractual savings development...

The author examines whether output contraction associated with cyclical output fluctuations and economic crises have an asymmetric effect on poverty. He identifies four potential sources of asymmetry: expectations and cofident factors, credit rationing at the firm level (induced by either...

There is currently a large interest in understanding firms' access to finance, particularly in the financing of small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs). But the financing patterns of SMEs across countries is not well understood. For example, little is known about the relative importance of...

The authors analyze how property rights affect the allocation of firms' available resources among different types of assets. In particular, they investigate empirically for a large number of countries whether firms in environments with more secure property rights allocate available resources...

The authors apply vector autoregression to firm-level panel data from 36 countries to study the dynamic relationship between firms' financial conditions and investment. They argue that by using orthogonalized impulse-response functions they are able to separate the "fundamental factors" (such as...

Using a firm-level survey database covering 48 countries, the authors investigate whether differences in financial and legal development affect the way firms finance their investments. The results indicate that external financing of investments is not a function of institutions, although the...

Countries that have experienced banking crises have adopted one of two distinct approaches toward the resolution of non-performing assets-a centralized or a decentralized solution. A centralized approach entails setting up a government agency-an asset management company-with the full...