Book Description

New and rich panel data for a large and representative sample of firms are used to estimate the sensitivity of access to capital to differing ownership structures. The investment behaviour of firms is examined in a dynamic setting in the presence of adjustment costs, liquidity constraints and imperfect competition. The empirical work is based on the derivation of Euler equations in the presence of symmetric and quadratic adjustment costs and both debt and equity constraints. Whereas the norm is to use ad hoc approaches to model these constraints, our alternative and more consistent leads to the inclusion of financial variables in investment equation in first differences rather than in levels. Our GMM estimates confirm the importance of financial factors in determining investment rates and suggest that firms owned by insiders, especially non-managerial employees, are more prone to be liquidity constrained than are others. Among the other groups, somewhat surprisingly, only domestic outsider owned firms display sensitivity to both measures of the availability of finance, with manager owned firms being sensitive to the availability of external finance, while state owned firms being sensitive to the availability of internal finance. Corporate Investment, Corporate Governance, Adjustment Costs, Liquidity Constraints, GMM Estimates, Transition Economies.