This study examines the financing choices of firms operating in a weak institutional environment. We argue that in relationship-based systems, global financing and political connections are substitutes: Well-connected firms are less likely to access foreign capital markets because (state-owned) domestic banks provide capital at low cost. Moreover, the additional scrutiny that comes with foreign securities might be at odds with close political ties at home. Using data from Indonesia, we provide strong support for this hypothesis. Firms with close political ties to former President Soeharto are significantly less likely than non-connected firms to have publicly traded foreign securities. We also examine how returns before and during the Asian financial crisis differ between firms with and without foreign securities. The former performed significantly better during the crisis, and their performance advantage increases considerably once we control for a firm’s closeness to the Soeharto regime. We show that simple return regressions in earlier work are downward biased if domestic opportunities such as political connections are ignored.
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Paper provided by Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA) in its series CREMA Working Paper Series with number
2003-03.
Find related papers by JEL classification: P16 - Economic Systems - - Capitalist Systems - - - Political Economy of Capitalism G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Capital and Ownership Structure G38 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Government Policy and Regulation K22 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Corporation and Securities Law K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law M41 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting - - Accounting - - - Accounting G18 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Government Policy and Regulation
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-De-Silanes & Andrei Shleifer, 1999.
"Corporate Ownership Around the World,"
Journal of Finance,
American Finance Association, vol. 54(2), pages 471-517, 04.
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