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This paper examines whether nancial development facilitates economic growth by scrutinizing one rationale for such a relationship; that nancial development reduces the costs of external nance to rms. Speci cally, we ask whether industrial sectors that are relatively more in need of external nance develop disproportionately faster in countries with more developed nancial markets. We nd this to be true in a large sample of countries over the 1980s. We show this result is unlikely to be driven by omitted variables, outliers, or reverse causality. (JEL O4, F3, G1) A large literature, dating at least as far back as Joseph A. Schumpeter (1911), emphasizes the positive in uence of the development of a country's nancial sector on the level and the rate of growth of its per capita income. The argument essentially is that the services the nancial sector provides { of reallocating capital to the highest value use without substantial risk of loss through moral hazard, adverse selection, or transactions costs { are an essential catalyst of economic growth. Empirical work seems consistent with this argument. For example, on the

We investigate the determinants of capital structure choice by analyzing the financing decisions of public firms in the major industrialized countries. At an aggregate level, firm leverage is fairly similar across the G-7 countries. We find that factors identified by previous studies as correlated in the cross-section with firm leverage in the U.S., are similarly correlated in other countries as well. However, a deeper examination of the U.S. and foreign evidence suggests that the theoretical underpinnings of the observed correlations are still largely unresolved.

We survey 392 CFOs about the cost of capital, capital budgeting, and capital structure. Large firms rely heavily on present value techniques and the capital asset pricing model, while small firms are relatively likely to use the payback criterion. We find that a surprising number of firms use their firm risk rather than project risk in evaluating new investments. Firms are concerned about maintaining financial flexibility and a good credit rating when issuing debt, and earnings per share dilution and recent stock price appreciation when issuing equity. We find some support for the pecking-order and trade-off capital structure hypotheses but little evidence that executives are concerned about asset substitution, asymmetric information, transactions costs, free cash flows, or personal taxes. Key words: capital structure, cost of capital, cost of equity, capital budgeting, discount rates, project valuation, survey. 1 We thank Franklin Allen for his detailed comments on the survey instrument and the overall project. We

No. This paper investigates the relationship between financing constraints and investment-cash flow sensitivities by analyzing the firms identified by Fazzari, Hubbard, and Petersen as having unusually high investment-cash flow sensitivities. We find that firms that appear less financially constrained exhibit significantly greater sensitivities than firms that appear more financially constrained. We find this pattern for the entire sample period, subperiods, and individual years. These results (and simple theoretical arguments) suggest that higher sensitivities cannot be interpreted as evidence that firms are more financially constrained. These findings call into question the interpretation of most previous research that uses this methodology. “Our financial position is sound... Most of the company’s funds are generated by operations and these funds grew at an average annual rate of 29 % [over the past 3 years]. Throughout the company’s history this self-financing concept has not been a constraint on the company’s growth. With recent growth restrained by depressed economic

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This paper develops a general framework for analyzing corporate risk management policies. We begin by observing that if external sources of finance are more costly to corporations than internally generated funds, there will typically be a benefit to hedging: hedging adds value to the extent that it helps ensure that a corporation has sufficient internal funds available to take advantage of attractive investment opportunities. We then argue that this simple observation has wide ranging impli-cations for the design of risk management strategies. We delineate how these strategies should depend on such factors as shocks to investment and financing opportunities. We also discuss exchange rate hedging strategies for multinationals, as well as strategies involving "nonlinear" instruments like options.

This paper reviews, appraises, and critiques theoretical and empirical research on the connections between the operation of the financial system and economic growth. While subject to ample qualifications and countervailing views, the preponderance of evidence suggests that both financial intermediaries and markets matter for growth and that reverse causality alone is not driving this relationship. Furthermore, theory and evidence imply that better developed financial systems ease external financing constraints facing firms, which illuminates one mechanism through which financial development influences economic growth. The paper highlights many areas needing additional research.

I analyze financing policies in a firm owned by atomistic shareholders who observe neither cash flows nor management’s investment decisions. Management derives perquisites from investment and invests as much as possible. Since it always claims that cash flow is too low to fund all positive net present value projects. its claim is not credible when cash flow is truly low. Consequently, management is forced to invest too little when cash flow is low and chooses to invest too much when it is high. Financing policies, by influencing the resources under management’s control, can reduce the costs of over- and underinvestment. 1.

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