The Effect of Political Connections on Credit Access: Does the Level of Financial Development Matter?
研究了政治关联如何影响企业信贷获取，以及金融发展水平如何调节这一关系。基于多国制造业数据，发现高管与政府官员交往时间越长，信贷获取越多，且这种效应在银行集中度高、净息差大的国家更强，在有信用信息共享机制的国家更弱。
Summary Although growing evidence indicates that political connections affect firm performance, little is known how institutional factors moderate the process. This paper investigates the effect of political connections on credit access, and the role of financial development in moderating the relationship between the two. The analysis is based on a unique dataset of manufacturing firms that covers dozens of developing and transition countries. The results show that the strength of political connections, measured by the amount of time the firm's senior managers spend with government officials, has a significant positive effect on credit access. Exploiting the cross‐country dimension of the dataset, I then show that the effect of political connections is higher in countries where the banking sector is more concentrated and has higher net interest margin. Furthermore, the effect of political connections is lower in countries that have credit information sharing mechanisms. These results suggest that a competitive banking sector improves efficiency of credit allocation by reducing politically motivated lending.