IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ifs/ifsewp/97-08.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Financial factors and investment in Belgium, France, German and the UK: A comparison using company panel data

Author

Listed:
  • Stephen Bond

    (Institute for Fiscal Studies and Nuffield College, Oxford)

  • Julie Elston

    (Institute for Fiscal Studies)

  • Jacques Mairesse

    (Institute for Fiscal Studies)

  • Benoit Mulkay

    (Institute for Fiscal Studies)

Abstract

This paper investigates whether the impact of financing constraints on company investment spending differs between firms in Belgium, France, Germany and the UK. Many previous studies have found that investment spending displays "excess sensitivity to cash flow" for individual countries, and concluded that this evidence is consistent with the presence of financing constraints. Very few previous studies have presented comparative evidence. Interest in a comparative study stems from the considerable differences between financial systems in these four countries: for example, in sources of investment finance, company ownership structures, the market for corporate control, and the relative importance of different financial markets and institutions. Differences between the UK "market-based" system and the German "bank-based" system have received particular attention. It is sometimes suggested that the arms-length relation between firms and suppliers of finance that tends to characterise the market-oriented system may be less effective at dealing with problems of asymmetric information and monitoring. If so, it is possible that financing constraints on investment would be more severe in the UK than in the continental European countries. We construct company panel datasets for manufacturing firms in Belgium, France, Germany and the UK, covering the period 1978-89. These datasets are used to estimate a range of empirical investment equations, and to investigate the role played by financial factors in each country. A robust finding is that cash flow or profits terms do appear to be both statistically and quantitatively more significant in the UK than in the other three countries. This evidence is consistent with the suggestion that financial constraints on company investment spending may be relatively severe in the more market-oriented UK financial system.

Suggested Citation

  • Stephen Bond & Julie Elston & Jacques Mairesse & Benoit Mulkay, 1997. "Financial factors and investment in Belgium, France, German and the UK: A comparison using company panel data," IFS Working Papers W97/08, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
  • Handle: RePEc:ifs:ifsewp:97/08
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ifs.org.uk
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mayer, Colin, 1988. "New issues in corporate finance," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 32(5), pages 1167-1183, June.
    2. Whited, Toni M, 1992. "Debt, Liquidity Constraints, and Corporate Investment: Evidence from Panel Data," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(4), pages 1425-1460, September.
    3. Nickell, Stephen J, 1981. "Biases in Dynamic Models with Fixed Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(6), pages 1417-1426, November.
    4. Colin Mayer, 1990. "Financial Systems, Corporate Finance, and Economic Development," NBER Chapters, in: Asymmetric Information, Corporate Finance, and Investment, pages 307-332, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Nickell, Stephen, 1985. "Error Correction, Partial Adjustment and All That: An Expository Note," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 47(2), pages 119-129, May.
    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. Tuomas A. Peltonen & Ricardo M. Sousa & Isabel S. Vansteenkiste, 2011. "Fundamentals, Financial Factors, and the Dynamics of Investment in Emerging Markets," Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(0), pages 88-105, May.
    2. Stephen Bond & Dietmar Harhoff & John Van Reenen, 2010. "Investment, R&D and Financial Constraints in Britain and Germany," NBER Chapters, in: Contributions in Memory of Zvi Griliches, pages 433-460, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Tuomas A. Peltonen & Ricardo M. Sousa & Isabel S. Vansteenkiste, 2009. "Asset prices, Credit and Investment in Emerging Markets," NIPE Working Papers 18/2009, NIPE - Universidade do Minho.
    4. Nicola Cetorelli & Michele Gambera, 2001. "Banking Market Structure, Financial Dependence and Growth: International Evidence from Industry Data," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(2), pages 617-648, April.
    5. Poncet, Sandra & Steingress, Walter & Vandenbussche, Hylke, 2010. "Financial constraints in China: Firm-level evidence," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 411-422, September.
    6. Jacques Mairesse & Bronwyn H. Hall & Benoît Mulkay, 1999. "Firm-Level Investment in France and the United States: An Exploration of What We Have Learned in Twenty Years," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 55-56, pages 27-67.
    7. Magnus Lundin & Nils Gottfries & Charlotte Bucht & Tomas Lindström, 2009. "Price and Investment Dynamics: Theory and Plant‐Level Data," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 41(5), pages 907-934, August.
    8. Sanjiva Prasad & Christopher J. Green & Victor Murinde, 2005. "Company Financial Structure: A Survey and Implications for Developing Economies," Chapters, in: Christopher J. Green & Colin Kirkpatrick & Victor Murinde (ed.), Finance and Development, chapter 12, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    9. Gu, Tao, 2019. "Wage determination and fixed capital investment in an imperfect financial market: the case of China," MPRA Paper 95986, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Allen, Franklin & Santomero, Anthony M., 2001. "What do financial intermediaries do?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 271-294, February.
    11. Marco Gallegati, 2005. "Financial constraints and the balance sheet channel: a re-interpretation," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(16), pages 1925-1933.
    12. Sandra Poncet & Walter Steingress & Hylke Vandenbussche, 2010. "Financial Constraints in China: the conditioning effect of FDI and State-Owned corporate sector," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-00633806, HAL.
    13. Zsolt Becsi & Ping Wang & Mark A. Wynne, 1998. "Costly intermediation and the big push," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 98-16, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    14. Kenichiro Suzuki & David Cobham, 2005. "Recent trends in the sources of finance for Japanese firms: has Japan become a 'high internal finance' country?," Discussion Paper Series, School of Economics and Finance 200501, School of Economics and Finance, University of St Andrews.
    15. Carlin, Wendy & Mayer, Colin, 2003. "Finance, investment, and growth," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 191-226, July.
    16. Hellwig, Martin, 2000. "Corporate governance and the financing of investment for structural change," Papers 00-32, Sonderforschungsbreich 504.
    17. Rizov, Marian, 2008. "Corporate capital structure and how soft budget constraints may affect it," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 22(4), pages 648-684.
    18. Allen, Franklin & Gale, Douglas, 1995. "A welfare comparison of intermediaries and financial markets in Germany and the US," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 179-209, February.
    19. Eugenio Gaiotti & Andrea Generale, 2002. "Does Monetary Policy Have Asymmetric Effects? A Look at the Investment Decisions of Italian Firms," Giornale degli Economisti, GDE (Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di Economia), Bocconi University, vol. 61(1), pages 29-59, June.
    20. Eugenio Gaiotti & Andrea Generale, 2002. "Does Monetary Policy Have Asymmetric Effects? A Look at the Investment Decisions of Italian Firms," Giornale degli Economisti, GDE (Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di Economia), Bocconi University, vol. 61(1), pages 29-59, June.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models
    • D21 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Theory

    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:ifs:ifsewp:97/08. 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: Emma Hyman (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ifsssuk.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.