بقای شرکت و توسعه مالی: شواهدی از یک پانل از اقتصادهای در حال ظهور آسیا

Using a panel of five Asian economies – Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand – over the period 1995–2007 we analyze the links between firm survival and financial development. We find that traditionally used measures of financial development play an important role in influencing firm survival. When stock markets become larger or more liquid firms’ survival chances improve. On the contrary, we show that higher levels of financial intermediation can increase firm failures. We also find that the beneficial effects of stock market development are more pronounced during the later years of our sample, while the adverse effects of bank intermediation have declined over time. Finally, large firms are more likely to benefit from developments in financial markets compared to small firms.

Does it matter for firm survival whether a country’s financial system is more or less developed? The idea that the financial system has a central role to play in economic fluctuations is an old one (see Gertler, 1988). Following the seminal work of Goldsmith (1969), several empirical studies have documented the existence of a strong positive link between the functioning of the financial system and various aspects of economic activity such as investment, employment and economic growth (see for instance, King and Levine, 1993, Rajan and Zingales, 1998 and Levine, 2006). These studies, however, remain largely silent about the role of financial development in firms’ survival prospects. Such evidence is important for understanding the mechanism by which financial development affects survival and can better inform policy makers, especially in the context of emerging Asian economies that are undergoing periods of deregulation and redesign (see Hasan et al., 2009).

Using a panel for five Asian economies – Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand – we find that country-level indicators of financial development have an important role to play in influencing firm survival. When stock markets develop, both in terms of size and liquidity, firms’ survival chances improve. In other words, moving towards a more market-based system is likely to reduce the incidence of business failures. On the contrary, we show that greater banking intermediation can increase firm failures and we argue that bank-based systems in emerging Asian markets are inherent to bank runs and therefore could impede firms’ survival prospects.