Publication: Financial and Legal Institutions and Firm Size
Loading...
Published
2003-03
ISSN
Date
2014-07-31
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
The authors investigate how a country's financial institutions and the quality of its legal system explain the size attained by its largest industrial firms in a sample of 44 countries. Firm size is positively related to the size of the banking system and the efficiency of the legal system. Thus, the authors find no evidence that firms are larger in order to internalize the functions of the banking system or to compensate for the general inefficiency of the legal system. But they do find evidence that externally financed firms are smaller in countries that have strong creditor rights and efficient legal systems. This suggests that firms in countries with weak creditor protections are larger in order to internalize the protection of capital investment.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Maksimovic, Vojislav; Beck, Thorsten; Demirguc-Kunt, Asli. 2003. Financial and Legal Institutions and Firm Size. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 2997. © http://hdl.handle.net/10986/19157 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication The Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Options(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29)Estimating the macroeconomic implications of climate change impacts and adaptation options is a topic of intense research. This paper presents a framework in the World Bank's macrostructural model to assess climate-related damages. This approach has been used in many Country Climate and Development Reports, a World Bank diagnostic that identifies priorities to ensure continued development in spite of climate change and climate policy objectives. The methodology captures a set of impact channels through which climate change affects the economy by (1) connecting a set of biophysical models to the macroeconomic model and (2) exploring a set of development and climate scenarios. The paper summarizes the results for five countries, highlighting the sources and magnitudes of their vulnerability --- with estimated gross domestic product losses in 2050 exceeding 10 percent of gross domestic product in some countries and scenarios, although only a small set of impact channels is included. The paper also presents estimates of the macroeconomic gains from sector-level adaptation interventions, considering their upfront costs and avoided climate impacts and finding significant net gross domestic product gains from adaptation opportunities identified in the Country Climate and Development Reports. Finally, the paper discusses the limits of current modeling approaches, and their complementarity with empirical approaches based on historical data series. The integrated modeling approach proposed in this paper can inform policymakers as they make proactive decisions on climate change adaptation and resilience.Publication South Africa’s Fragmented Cities: The Unequal Burden of Labor Market Frictions(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-08)Using high-resolution administrative, census, and satellite data, this paper shows that South African cities are characterized by spatial mismatches between where people live and where jobs are located, relative to 20 global peers. Areas within 5 kilometers of commercial centers have 9,300 fewer residents per square kilometer than expected, which is 60 percent below the global median. Poor, dense neighborhoods are most affected. In Johannesburg, a 10-percentile increase in distance from the nearest business hub corresponds to a 3.7-percentile drop in asset wealth (a proxy of household wellbeing) and 4.9-percentile drop in employment. In Cape Town, the declines are 4.0 and 3.7 percentiles, respectively. Employment is 87 percent lower in the poorest decile than the richest in Johannesburg and 61 percent lower in Cape Town. These findings suggest that South Africa’s spatial organization of people and economic activity constrains agglomeration and reinforces inequality. This methodology provides a scalable and standardized data-driven framework to analyze spatial accessibility and agglomeration frictions in complex, data-constrained urban systems.Publication The Evolution of Local Participatory Democracy in Nepal(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-11-05)Nepal is, according to its constitution, among the world’s most decentralized countries, with a long and complex tradition of local-level public participation. This paper traces the evolution of Nepal’s modern participatory institutions, examining the extent to which they are “induced” by external interventions versus being “organically” rooted in indigenous practices. The paper identifies three broad phases: an initial focus on participation in project implementation; a subsequent phase that expanded citizen engagement; and a third phase of citizen empowerment, culminating in the 2015 federal constitution, which granted unprecedented local autonomy. The analysis yields five key findings. First, over the past 50 years, successive reforms have progressively expanded opportunities for citizens to influence local decision-making. Second, these reforms have integrated traditional participatory mechanisms into formal institutions of local government. Third, although central-level initiatives exist, most participatory platforms continue to operate at the local level. Fourth, the federal constitution has created a new landscape of local democracy, embedding autonomy and accountability. Fifth, although they are still valued in many ethnic and territorial communities, traditional participatory practices are gradually disappearing. The paper concludes by offering policy recommendations to help donor agencies and governments strengthen Nepal’s democratic trajectory. It argues that effective interventions should build on Nepal’s deep participatory traditions while recognizing the constitutional reality of far-reaching local autonomy.Publication Institutional Capacity for Policy Implementation: An Analytical Framework(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-07)State capacity is an important prerequisite for policy implementation, yet at the country level it is difficult to measure, assess, and reform. This paper proposes a focus on institutional capacity: the ability of public institutions to implement the specific policy mandates for which they are responsible. Based on a review of existing literature, the paper defines the different dimensions that compose institutional capacity and groups them into two cross-cutting categories: organizational dimensions (personnel, financial resources, information systems, and management practices) and governance dimensions (transparency, independence, and accountability). The paper proposes measures for organizational and governance dimensions using existing data, shows intra-institutional variation of these measures within countries, and discusses how new data could be collected for better measurement of these concepts. Finally, the paper illustrates how the framework can be used to diagnose the sources of common problems related to weak policy implementation.Publication Closing the Gender Gap in Entrepreneurship: Overcoming Challenges in Law and Practice for Female Entrepreneurs(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-07)Despite significant strides toward gender equality, women around the world continue to encounter systemic obstacles that hinder their entrepreneurial success. This paper systematically reviews the literature on the barriers female entrepreneurs face and the solutions proposed to overcome these challenges. It discusses institutional factors, financial factors, human capital factors, and social and cultural factors. The literature overview is complemented by a series of stylized facts that illustrate how overcoming some of these existing barriers is correlated with improved women’s entrepreneurship and female labor force participation, drawing on the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law database as well as the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys. The findings underscore the need for creating an enabling environment where women can thrive as entrepreneurs.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Financial and Legal Constraints to Firm Growth : Does Size Matter?(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2002-02)Using a unique firm-level survey data base, covering fifty four countries, the authors investigate whether different financial, legal, and corruption issues that firms report as constraints, actually affect their growth rates. The results show that the extent to which these factors constrain a firm's growth depends very much on its size, and that it is consistently the smallest firms that are most adversely affected by all these constraints. Firm growth is more affected by reported constraints in countries with underdeveloped financial, and legal systems, and higher corruption. So, policy measures to improve financial, and legal development, and reduce corruption are well justified in promoting firm growth, particularly the development of the small, and medium enterprise sector. But the evidence also shows that the intuitive descriptors of an "efficient" legal system, are not correlated with the components of the general legal constraints that predict firm growth. This finding suggests that the mechanism by which the legal system affects firm performance, is not well understood. The authors' findings also provide evidence that the corruption of bank officials, constraints firm growth. This "institutional failure" should be taken into account, when modeling the monitoring role of financial institutions in overcoming market failures due to informational asymmetries.Publication Financing Patterns around the World : The Role of Institutions(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2002-10)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 form of external finance is. The authors identify two explanations for this. First, legal and financial institutions affect different types of external finance in offsetting ways. Second, firm size is an important determinant of whether firms can have access to different types of external finance. Larger firms with financing needs are more likely to use external finance compared with small firms. The results also indicate that these firms are more likely to use external finance in more developed financial systems, particularly debt and equity finance. The authors also find evidence consistent with the pecking order theory in financially developed countries, particularly for large firms.Publication The Determinants of Financing Obstacles(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2004-02)The authors use survey data on a sample of over 10,000 firms from 80 countries to assess (1) how successful a priori classifications are in distinguishing between financially constrained and unconstrained firms, and (2) more generally, the determinants of financing obstacles of firms. They find that older, larger, and foreign-owned firms report less financing obstacles. Their findings thus confirm the usefulness of size, age, and ownership as a priori classifications of financing constraints, while they shed doubts on other classifications used in the literature. Their results also suggest that institutional development is the most important country characteristic explaining cross-country variation in firms' financing obstacles.Publication Bank Competition, Financing Obstacles, and Access to Credit(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-03)Theory makes ambiguous predictions about the effects of bank concentration on access to external finance. Using a unique data base for 74 countries of financing obstacles and financing patterns for firms of small, medium, and large size, the authors assess the effects of banking market structure on financing obstacles and the access of firms to bank finance. The authors find that bank concentration increases financing obstacles and decreases the likelihood of receiving bank finance, with the impact decreasing in size. The relation of bank concentration and financing obstacles is dampened in countries with well developed institutions, higher levels of economic and financial development, and a larger share of foreign-owned banks. The effect is exacerbated by more restrictions on banks' activities, more government interference in the banking sector, and a larger share of government-owned banks. Finally, it is possible to alleviate the negative impact of bank concentration on access to finance by reducing activity restrictions.Publication Financial Structure and Economic Development : Firm, Industry, and Country Evidence(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2000-08)The authors explore the relationship between financial structure - the degree to which a financial system is market- or bank-based - and economic development. They use three methodologies: 1) The cross-country approach uses cross-country data to assess whether economies grow faster with market- or bank-based systems. 2) The industry approach uses a country-industry panel to assess whether industries that depend heavily on external financing grow faster in market- or ban-based financial systems, and whether financial structure influences the rate at which new firms are created. 3) The firm-level approach uses firm-level data across a broad selection of countries to test whether firms are more likely to grow beyond the rate predicted by internal resources, and short-term borrowings in market- or bank-based financial systems. The cross-country regressions, the industry panel estimations, and the firm-level analyses, provide remarkably consistent conclusions: a) Financial structure is not an analytically useful way to distinguish financial systems. b) Financial structure does not help us understand economic growth, industrial performance, or firm expansion. c) The results are inconsistent with both market-based and bank-based views. In other words, economies do not grow faster, industries dependent on external financing do not expand faster, new firms are not created more easily, firms' access to external finance is not greater, and, firms do not grow faster in either market- or bank-based financial systems. The authors find overwhelming evidence that the overall level of financial development, and the legal environment in which financial intermediaries, and markets operate, critically influence economic development.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Taxes, Spending, and Equity: International Patterns and Lessons for Developing Countries(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-11-17)Taxes and public spending underpin the basic administration of government and finance the human capital and infrastructure investments needed for economic growth. They can also have a significant and immediate impact on poverty and inequality. The question of how public finance can support longer-term growth objectives while promoting equity has become even more important in recent years, given the high fiscal deficits and debt levels most countries emerged with in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These included the increasing cost of debt and the need to restart environmentally sustainable growth while helping households address the learning losses and other social scars caused by the pandemic. This paper examines the global evidence on which households pay which taxes and who benefits from what spending, and critically, the net effect on different households across the income distribution. The aim is to identify the patterns and lessons that emerge for designing progressive fiscal policies. A global dataset of 96 countries is assembled, spanning all regions of the world and all national income levels, grounded in the Commitment to Equity (CEQ) approach to fiscal incidence.Publication Sustainable Telecenters : A Guide for Government Policy(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-01)For at least a decade, governments and non-profit organizations, often supported by bilateral aid, have experimented with tele-centers as means to extend access to computers, the Internet, and other information, and communication services to rural, and low-income urban areas of developing countries. Results have been mixed. This note proposes a guide for government policy on tele-centers conceived as private businesses - though with development functions - that are commercially sustainable beyond initial public support.Publication E-Commerce Participation and Household Income Growth in Taobao Villages(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-04)E-commerce has developed rapidly in China, and Taobao Villages, which are villages significantly engaged in e-commerce, are prospering in rural areas. E-commerce is fostering entrepreneurship and creating flexible and inclusive employment opportunities, including for women and youth. This paper examines the role of e-commerce participation in household income growth, drawing from a survey of representative Taobao Villages in 2017. The paper presents three main findings. First, e-commerce participation is not random: participation is higher among the households with younger household heads, with secondary education, particularly those with technical and vocational education, urban work experience, and knowledge of e-commerce. Second, e-commerce participation is associated with higher household income, with some indications that participation has a strong positive effect on household incomes. Third, e-commerce appears to yield benefits that are broadly shared among participants in an equitable way in Taobao Villages.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Brazil Country Program Evaluation, FY2004-11 : Evaluation of the World Bank Group Program(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2014-10-27)This country program evaluation (CPE) evaluates World Bank Group (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), or the Bank, International Finance Corporation (IFC), and Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) operations in Brazil from FY2004 through FY2011. It seeks to answer two questions: to what extent was the Bank Group program relevant to Brazil's development needs?, and how effective were Bank Group operations in helping to accelerate economic growth and making growth more inclusive and environmentally sustainable? The period reviewed was covered by two country strategies, one for FY2004-07 and the other for FY2008-11. The evaluation comments on aspects of the country partnership strategy (CPS) FY2012-15 with particular reference to its relevance and design. The report aims to extract lessons relevant to future Bank Group operations in Brazil. The study also examines the synergies between lending and knowledge services and the effectiveness of collaboration within the Bank Group and with external development partners. This report has five chapters. Chapter one gives purpose and country context. Chapter two summarizes the Bank Group operations and examines trends and patterns during the evaluation period. Chapters three and four assess the relevance and contributions of these operations to the objectives stated in the country strategies. The concluding chapter draws lessons and recommendations for the Bank Group's future engagement in Brazil.