The impact of corruption on SMEs’ access to finance: Evidence using firm-level survey data from developing countries
利用79个发展中国家制造业企业数据，研究发现腐败显著增加了中小企业面临融资约束的可能性，且这一影响在信贷市场不完善和产品市场竞争激烈的环境中更为突出。
The present paper estimates the impact of bureaucratic corruption on access to finance for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the manufacturing sectors of 79 developing countries. Corruption can make it difficult for businesses to obtain financing by reducing profits, increasing credit demand, increasing the likelihood of bankruptcy , creating uncertainty about future profits, and exacerbating the asymmetric information problem between borrowers and lenders. Consistent with this viewpoint, our findings show that corruption significantly increases the likelihood of a manufacturing SME being financially constrained. A one standard deviation increase in the prevalence of corruption leads to a 3.5–4.9% point increase in the likelihood or probability of a manufacturing SME being financially constrained. In countries with credit bureaus and more freely functioning credit markets, the increase in the likelihood of being financially constrained due to higher corruption is much smaller. We argue and provide evidence that these heterogeneities stem from the specific ways in which corruption affects SMEs’ access to finance . Thus, the heterogeneities help to raise confidence against the omitted variable bias and reverse causality concerns with our estimation. We also find that higher corruption makes it more difficult for SMEs to access finance in more competitive product markets, as well as for small compared to medium-sized firms. The findings have important policy implications for anti-corruption initiatives, financial development, and the level of competition in product markets.