This paper studies the impact of foreign bank entry on domestic firms’ access to bank credit using a within-country staggered geographic variation in the policy of foreign bank lending in China. The paper finds that after foreign bank entry profitable firms use more long-term bank loans; whereas firms with higher value of potential collateral do not. It also finds that non-state-owned firms become able to substitute some trade credit with long-term bank loans. The findings suggest that less opaque firms and non-state-owned firms benefit more from foreign bank entry and that collateral may only play a limited role in mitigating the problem of information asymmetry when creditors’ rights are not well protected in a host country.

Abstract We provide evidence on the causal link between financing constraints and the risk of corporate cash flows and returns. For identification, we compare public US firms in the same industry, location, and size quintile, but whose access to bank credit was differentially affected by WorldCom’s demise in 2002. A credit shortage induces a permanent increase in the volatility and skewness of operating cash flows and an increase in the correlation between firm stock and market returns. We document how firms’ cash, payout, and investment policies respond endogenously to mitigate the impact of constraints on risk.