IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/erg/wpaper/1279.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

State-Business Relations and Financial Accessibility: Explaining Firm Performance in the MENA Region

Author

Listed:
  • Burhan Can Karahasan

    (Piri Reis University)

  • Firat Bilgel

Abstract

This study investigates the triangular relationship among state-business relations, financial access and economic performance using _rm-level data for selected Middle East and North African countries. We hypothesize that financial intermediation acts as a mediating factor in the relationship between state-business relations and _rm performance. Employing a causal mediation analysis, our results show that inefficient ties with the state is a cause of poor _rm performance. Depending on the performance measure, inefficient state-business relations reduce _rm performance by about 2.3-4.4 percent through access to finance and by about 12 to 40 percent via its direct effect. About 3 to 16 percent of the total effect is mediated through financial access while the remaining is the direct effect of inefficient state-business relations on firm performance. Our results highlight that financial intermediation is a significant mediating factor in the mechanism between state-business relations and firm performance.

Suggested Citation

  • Burhan Can Karahasan & Firat Bilgel, 2018. "State-Business Relations and Financial Accessibility: Explaining Firm Performance in the MENA Region," Working Papers 1279, Economic Research Forum, revised 26 Dec 2018.
    • Handle: RePEc:erg:wpaper:1279
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://erf.org.eg/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/1279.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://bit.ly/2Tb208q
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thomas Ferguson & Hans-Joachim Voth, 2008. "Betting on Hitler—The Value of Political Connections in Nazi Germany," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(1), pages 101-137.
    2. Chutatong Charumilind & Raja Kali & Yupana Wiwattanakantang, 2006. "Connected Lending: Thailand before the Financial Crisis," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 79(1), pages 181-218, January.
    3. Claessens, Stijn & Feijen, Erik & Laeven, Luc, 2008. "Political connections and preferential access to finance: The role of campaign contributions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(3), pages 554-580, June.
    4. Dani Rodrik & Arvind Subramanian & Francesco Trebbi, 2004. "Institutions Rule: The Primacy of Institutions Over Geography and Integration in Economic Development," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 9(2), pages 131-165, June.
    5. Hainmueller, Jens, 2012. "Entropy Balancing for Causal Effects: A Multivariate Reweighting Method to Produce Balanced Samples in Observational Studies," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(1), pages 25-46, January.
    6. Imai, Kosuke & Keele, Luke & Tingley, Dustin & Yamamoto, Teppei, 2011. "Unpacking the Black Box of Causality: Learning about Causal Mechanisms from Experimental and Observational Studies," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 105(4), pages 765-789, November.
    7. Robert G. King & Ross Levine, 1993. "Finance and Growth: Schumpeter Might Be Right," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 108(3), pages 717-737.
    8. Levine, Ross & Zervos, Sara, 1998. "Stock Markets, Banks, and Economic Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(3), pages 537-558, June.
    9. Coe, David T. & Helpman, Elhanan & Hoffmaister, Alexander W., 2009. "International R&D spillovers and institutions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(7), pages 723-741, October.
    10. Evans, David S & Jovanovic, Boyan, 1989. "An Estimated Model of Entrepreneurial Choice under Liquidity Constraints," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(4), pages 808-827, August.
    11. Jeremy Seekings & Nicoli Nattrass, 2011. "State‐business relations and pro‐poor growth in South Africa," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(3), pages 338-357, April.
    12. Ahmet Faruk AYSAN & Mustapha Kamel NABLI & Marie‐Ange VÉGANZONÈS‐VAROUDAKIS, 2007. "Governance Institutions And Private Investment: An Application To The Middle East And North Africa," The Developing Economies, Institute of Developing Economies, vol. 45(3), pages 339-377, September.
    13. Chekir Hamouda & Diwan Ishac, 2014. "Crony Capitalism in Egypt," Journal of Globalization and Development, De Gruyter, vol. 5(2), pages 177-211, December.
    14. Sean Cleary, 1999. "The Relationship between Firm Investment and Financial Status," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(2), pages 673-692, April.
    15. North, Douglass C, 1994. "Economic Performance through Time," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(3), pages 359-368, June.
    16. Hainmueller, Jens & Xu, Yiqing, 2013. "ebalance: A Stata Package for Entropy Balancing," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 54(i07).
    17. Saleheen Khan & Faridul Islam & Syed Ahmed, 2005. "The Asian crisis: an economic analysis of the causes," Journal of Developing Areas, Tennessee State University, College of Business, vol. 39(1), pages 169-190, September.
    18. Raymond Hicks & Dustin Tingley, 2011. "Causal mediation analysis," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 11(4), pages 605-619, December.
    19. Nguyen, Thuy Thu & van Dijk, Mathijs A., 2012. "Corruption, growth, and governance: Private vs. state-owned firms in Vietnam," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(11), pages 2935-2948.
    20. Thorsten Beck & Asli Demirgüç‐Kunt & Vojislav Maksimovic, 2005. "Financial and Legal Constraints to Growth: Does Firm Size Matter?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(1), pages 137-177, February.
    21. Kunal Sen & Dirk Te Velde, 2009. "State Business Relations and Economic Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(8), pages 1267-1283.
    22. Johnson, Chalmers, 1998. "Economic Crisis in East Asia: The Clash of Capitalisms," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 22(6), pages 653-661, November.
    23. Doner, Richard F. & Schneider, Ben Ross, 2000. "Business Associations and Economic Development: Why Some Associations Contribute More Than Others," Business and Politics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 2(3), pages 261-288, November.
    24. Asli Demirgüç-Kunt & Vojislav Maksimovic, 1998. "Law, Finance, and Firm Growth," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 53(6), pages 2107-2137, December.
    25. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James A. Robinson, 2001. "The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1369-1401, December.
    26. Fisman, Raymond & Svensson, Jakob, 2007. "Are corruption and taxation really harmful to growth? Firm level evidence," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 63-75, May.
    27. Beck, Thorsten & Demirguc-Kunt, Asli, 2006. "Small and medium-size enterprises: Access to finance as a growth constraint," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(11), pages 2931-2943, November.
    28. Gary Solon & Steven J. Haider & Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, 2015. "What Are We Weighting For?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 50(2), pages 301-316.
    29. Massimiliano Calì & Siddhartha Mitra & Purnima Purohit, 2011. "Measuring state–business relations within developing countries: An application to Indian states," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(3), pages 394-419, April.
    30. Ahmet Faruk Aysan & M-A Veganzones-Varoudakis, 2007. "How Do Political and Governance Institutions Affect Private Investment Decisions? An Application to the Middle East and North Africa," Working Papers 2007/05, Bogazici University, Department of Economics.
    31. Chang, Ha-Joon, 2000. "The Hazard of Moral Hazard: Untangling the Asian Crisis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 775-788, April.
    32. Esfahani, Hadi Salehi & Ramirez, Maria Teresa, 2003. "Institutions, infrastructure, and economic growth," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 443-477, April.
    33. Johnson, Simon & Mitton, Todd, 2003. "Cronyism and capital controls: evidence from Malaysia," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 351-382, February.
    34. Alissa Koldertsova, 2011. "The Second Corporate Governance Wave in the Middle East and North Africa," OECD Journal: Financial Market Trends, OECD Publishing, vol. 2010(2), pages 219-226.
    35. Mara Faccio, 2006. "Politically Connected Firms," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 369-386, March.
    36. Henrik Hansen & John Rand & Finn Tarp, 2009. "Enterprise Growth and Survival in Vietnam: Does Government Support Matter?," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(7), pages 1048-1069, August.
    37. Doner Richard F. & Schneider Ben Ross, 2000. "Business Associations and Economic Development: Why Some Associations Contribute More Than Others," Business and Politics, De Gruyter, vol. 2(3), pages 1-29, December.
    38. Marie-Ange Véganzonès-Varoudakis & A. Aysan & M.K. Nabli, 2007. "Governance, Institutions, and Private Investment," Post-Print hal-00204786, HAL.
    39. Tingley, Dustin & Yamamoto, Teppei & Hirose, Kentaro & Keele, Luke & Imai, Kosuke, 2014. "mediation: R Package for Causal Mediation Analysis," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 59(i05).
    40. John Shuhe Li, 2003. "Relation‐based versus Rule‐based Governance: an Explanation of the East Asian Miracle and Asian Crisis," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(4), pages 651-673, September.
    41. Asim Ijaz Khwaja & Atif Mian, 2005. "Do Lenders Favor Politically Connected Firms? Rent Provision in an Emerging Financial Market," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(4), pages 1371-1411.
    42. Raymond Fisman, 2001. "Estimating the Value of Political Connections," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 1095-1102, September.
    43. Tyler J. VanderWeele & James M. Robins, 2010. "Signed directed acyclic graphs for causal inference," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 72(1), pages 111-127, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Burhan Can Karahasan & Fırat Bilgel, 2020. "State–Business Relations, Financial Access and Firm Performance: A Causal Mediation Analysis," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(7), pages 1033-1074, October.
    2. Feng, Xunan & Johansson, Anders C. & Zhang, Tianyu, 2014. "Political participation and entrepreneurial initial public offerings in China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 269-285.
    3. Oznur Ozdamar & Eleftherios Giovanis & Sahizer Samuk, 2020. "State business relations and the dynamics of job flows in Egypt and Turkey," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 10(4), pages 519-558, December.
    4. Feng, Xunan & Johansson, Anders C. & Zhang, Tianyu, 2015. "Mixing business with politics: Political participation by entrepreneurs in China," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 220-235.
    5. Soumyajit Mazumder, 2016. "Can I stay a BIT longer? The effect of bilateral investment treaties on political survival," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 11(4), pages 477-521, December.
    6. Knack, Steve & Xu, Lixin Colin, 2017. "Unbundling institutions for external finance: Worldwide firm-level evidence," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 215-232.
    7. Anders C. Johansson, 2015. "On the challenge to competitive authoritarianism and political patronage in Malaysia," Asian-Pacific Economic Literature, The Crawford School, The Australian National University, vol. 29(2), pages 47-67, November.
    8. Cull, Robert & Li, Wei & Sun, Bo & Xu, Lixin Colin, 2015. "Government connections and financial constraints: Evidence from a large representative sample of Chinese firms," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 271-294.
    9. Polsiri, Piruna & Jiraporn, Pornsit, 2012. "Political connections, ownership structure, and financial institution failure," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 39-53.
    10. Banerjee, Rajabrata & Gupta, Kartick & Krishnamurti, Chandrasekhar, 2022. "Does corrupt practice increase the implied cost of equity?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    11. Chung-Hua Shen & Chih-Yung Lin, 2016. "Political connections, financial constraints, and corporate investment," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 47(2), pages 343-368, August.
    12. Zijian Li, 2022. "Government-Enterprise Relation, Financing Plight and Enterprise Growth: Empirical Evidence from World Bank on Chinese Firms," The AMFITEATRU ECONOMIC journal, Academy of Economic Studies - Bucharest, Romania, vol. 24(59), pages 214-214.
    13. Yeh, Yin-Hua & Shu, Pei-Gi & Chiu, Shean-Bii, 2013. "Political connections, corporate governance and preferential bank loans," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 1079-1101.
    14. Carvalho, Augusto & Guimaraes, Bernardo, 2018. "State-controlled companies and political risk: Evidence from the 2014 Brazilian election," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 66-78.
    15. Hallward-Driemeier,Mary C. & Kochanova,Anna & Rijkers,Bob, 2020. "Does Democratization Promote Competition? : Indonesian Manufacturing Pre and Post Suharto," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9112, The World Bank.
    16. Zengji Song & Abraham Nahm & Zongyi Zhang, 2015. "The value of partial state ownership in publicly listed private sector enterprises: evidence from China," Post-Communist Economies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(3), pages 336-353, September.
    17. Lin, Chen & Lin, Ping & Song, Frank, 2010. "Property rights protection and corporate R&D: Evidence from China," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 49-62, September.
    18. Chune Young Chung & Jung Hoon Byun & Jason Young, 2019. "Corporate Political Ties and Firm Value: Comparative Analysis in the Korean Market," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(2), pages 1-25, January.
    19. Nan Zhang & Qiaozhuan Liang & Huiying Li & Xiao Wang, 2022. "The organizational relationship–based political connection and debt financing: Evidence from Chinese private firms," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 74(1), pages 69-105, January.
    20. Nys, Emmanuelle & Tarazi, Amine & Trinugroho, Irwan, 2015. "Political connections, bank deposits, and formal deposit insurance," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 19(C), pages 83-104.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:erg:wpaper:1279. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sherine Ghoneim (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/erfaceg.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.