An Empirical Assessment of the Export—Financial Constraint Relationship: How Different are Small and Medium Enterprises?

We analyze the financial constraint—export relationship in a framework that is consistent with stylized features of data. The analysis accounts for whether firms need loans or have sufficient capital, and studies the use of bank loans (quantity of finance) and availability of overdraft facilities (flexibility of finance). We develop a two-stage estimation procedure that uses an equation of bank financing in the first stage and an export equation in the second. We find that export participation (extensive margin) and the share of exports in total sales (intensive margin) increase with the availability of overdraft facilities, particularly so for SMEs with loan needs. The percentage of foreign ownership, ISO certification, and operation in manufacturing sector are also significant and positively associated with a firm’s export participation and firm’s share of exports in total sales. The main results are robust to a battery of econometric specifications and statistical tests applied on the firm-level data from our sample countries. The finding of a large economic significance of the overdraft facility variable is consistent with a growing concern from SMEs that the regulatory response to the Global Financial Crisis has forced banks to tighten risk management, thereby raising the rejection rates of overdraft and loan applications from SMEs. For SMEs in developing countries and emerging markets, the improvement of alternative financing forms and supportive government interventions has become ever more challenging.