Global Capital Flows and Financing Constraints

Ann E. Harrison, Inessa Love and Margaret Mcmillan ()

No 8887, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Firms often cite financing constraints as one of their primary obstacles to investment. Global capital flows, by bringing in scarce capital, may ease host-country firms' financing constraints. However, if incoming foreign investors borrow heavily from domestic basnks, direct foreign investment (DFI) may exacerbate financing constraints by crowding host country firms out of domestic capital markets. Combininb a unique cross-country firm-level panel with time-series data on restrictions on international transactions and capital flows, we find that different measures of global flows are associated with a reduction in firm-level financing constraints. First, we show that one type of capital inflow--DFI--is associated with a reduction in financing constraints. Second, we test whether restrictions on international transactions affect firms' financing constraints. Our results suggest that only one type of restriction--those on capital account transactions--negatively affect firms' financing constraints. We also show that multinational firms are not financially constrained and do not appear to be sensitive to the level of DFI. This implies that DFI eases financing constraints for non-multinational firms. Finally, we show that DFI only eases financing constraints in the non-G7 countries.

JEL-codes: F2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ifn
Date: 2002-04
Note: ITI
View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w8887.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html.

Related works:
Working Paper: Global capital flows and financing constraints (2002)
Journal Article: Global capital flows and financing constraints (2004)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:8887

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w8887
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Address: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by ().