BOFIT Discussion Papers, Institute for Economies in Transition, Bank of Finland
No 4/2014:
Does money buy credit? Firm-level evidence on bribery and bank debt
Zuzana Fungácová ()
, Anna Kochanova ()
and Laurent Weill ()
Abstract: This study examines how bribery influences bank debt
ratios for a large sample of firms from 14 transition countries. We combine
information on bribery practices from the BEEPS survey with firm-level
accounting data from the Amadeus database. Bribery is measured by the
frequency of extra unofficial payments to officials to “get things done”.
We find that bribery is positively related to firms’ bank debt ratios,
which provides evidence that bribing bank officials facilitates firms’
access to bank loans. This impact differs with the maturity of bank debt,
as bribery contributes to higher short-term bank debt ratios but lower
long-term bank debt ratios. Finally, we find that the institutional
characteristics of the banking industry influence the relation between
bribery and firms’ bank debt ratios. Higher levels of financial development
constrain the positive effects of bribery whereas larger market shares of
state-owned banks have the opposite effect. Foreign bank presence also
affects the impact of bribery, albeit this effect depends on the maturity
of firms’ bank-debt.
Keywords: bank lending; bribery; corruption; Eastern Europe; (follow links to similar papers)
JEL-Codes: G32; K42; P29; (follow links to similar papers)
40 pages, January 21, 2014
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- This paper is published as:
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Fungácová, Zuzana, Anna Kochanova and Laurent Weill, (2015), 'Does money buy credit? Firm-level evidence on bribery and bank debt', World Development, Vol. 68, April, pages 308-322
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