Can past informality impede registered firms’ access to credit?
利用159个国家2006至2023年的企业调查数据，研究发现曾以非正规方式起步的注册企业比一开始就正规经营的企业更可能面临信贷约束，且这一影响随企业规模、年龄及制度环境改善而减弱。
Using firm-level data from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys, covering 159 countries from 2006 to 2023, we examine whether past informality affects the credit constraints of registered firms. Estimations, based on the entropy balancing method, indicate that registered firms that began operations informally are more likely to be credit-constrained than those that started in the formal sector. This finding is extremely robust to a variety of robustness tests, including instrumental variables, propensity score matching, potential omitted variables, restricted samples, alternative measures of credit constraints, and different specifications such as Linear Probability, Logit, and Probit models. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the detrimental impact of past informality lessens with firm size, firm age, and better structural factors like regulatory quality, trade openness, entrepreneurial dynamism, and public spending. Productivity, competition from the informal sector, and the quality of financial statements are key channels through which past informality increases credit constraints for registered firms.