Law and firms'access to finance

Thorsten Beck, Asli Demirguc-Kunt and Ross Levine (rosslevine@stanford.edu)

No 3194, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Why does a country's legal origin influence its firms'access to finance? Using data from over 4,000 firms in 38 countries, the authors show that firms in countries with French legal origin face significantly higher obstacles in accessing external finance than firms in common law countries. Next, their results indicate that French legal origin countries tend to have (1) less adaptable legal systems, as defined by the degree to which case law and principles of equity rather than simply statutory law are accepted foundations of legal decisions, and (2) less politically independent judiciaries, as defined by the degree of tenure of supreme court judges and their jurisdiction over cases involving the government. Finally, the authors find that the adaptability of a country's legal system is more important for explaining the obstacles that firms face in contracting for external finance than the political independence of the judiciary. So, they distinguish among competing explanations of why law matters for financial development by empirically documenting the links running from international differences in legal origin to the operation of the financial system at the firm level.

Keywords: Financial Intermediation; Payment Systems&Infrastructure; Labor Policies; Legal Institutions of the Market Economy; Legal Products; Legal Products; National Governance; Governance Indicators; Legal Institutions of the Market Economy; Judicial System Reform (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-01-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-acc, nep-fin and nep-law
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Law and Firms' Access to Finance (2005)
Working Paper: Law and Firms' Access to Finance (2004)
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