IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/clb/wpaper/201009.html

Do Local Financial And Legal Systems Affect Smes Capital Structure?

Author

Listed:
  • Mariarosaria Agostino

  • Maurizio La Rocca

  • Tiziana La Rocca

  • Francesco Trivieri

    (Dipartimento di Economia e Statistica, Università della Calabria)

Abstract

This paper investigates the role of institutional differences at the local level as determinants of firms’ capital structure. Specifically, its aim is to empirically assess whether and to what extent SMEs’ financial decisions are affected by local financial development – evaluating this influence both ceteris paribus, and by allowing it to be conditional on different levels of legal enforcement inefficiency. Controlling for debt inertia, firms’ heterogeneity and endogeneity problems, we find that local financial development may be an important determinant of SMEs’ capital structure, and that firms appear to have better access to financial debt in areas characterized by a higher quality of the legal system. Thus, despite the international process of capital markets integration, local financial institutions do not seem to become irrelevant for SMEs, which are in need of well developed institutions at local level to gain easier access to external financial resources.

Suggested Citation

  • Mariarosaria Agostino & Maurizio La Rocca & Tiziana La Rocca & Francesco Trivieri, 2010. "Do Local Financial And Legal Systems Affect Smes Capital Structure?," Working Papers 201009, Università della Calabria, Dipartimento di Economia, Statistica e Finanza "Giovanni Anania" - DESF.
    • Handle: RePEc:clb:wpaper:201009
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ecostat.unical.it/RePEc/WorkingPapers/WP09_2010.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2010-05
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Francesco Fasano & Maurizio Rocca, 2024. "Local versus national banking development in Europe: who is the winner?," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 14(1), pages 227-256, March.
    3. Falavigna, Greta & Ippoliti, Roberto, 2023. "SMEs’ behavior under financial constraints: An empirical investigation on the legal environment and the substitution effect with tax arrears," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    4. repec:spt:apfiba:v::y:2018:i::f:8_2_4 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Annamaria Nifo & Sabrina Ruberto & Gaetano Vecchione, 2018. "Does institutional quality matter for lending relationships?," Journal of Applied Finance & Banking, SCIENPRESS Ltd, vol. 8(2), pages 1-4.
    6. Fasano, Francesco & Rocca, Maurizio La & Cariola, Alfio & Passarelli, Mariacarmela, 2023. "Banking relationship and research spin-offs’ life cycle: The Italian experience," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    7. Nifo, Annamaria & Ruberto, Sabrina & Vecchione, Gaetano, 2016. "Does institutional quality matter for lending relationships? Evidence from Italy," MPRA Paper 75279, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill

    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:clb:wpaper:201009. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Giovanni Dodero (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/decalit.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.