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Journal of Financial Intermediation Vol. 21 No. 3 2012

Financing firms in India

Franklin Allen1; Rajesh Chakrabarti2; Sankar De2; Jun Qian3; Meijun Qian4

1 University of Pennsylvania · 2 Indian School of Business · 3 Boston College · 4 National University of Singapore

Abstract

With extensive cross-country datasets and India firm samples, as well as our own surveys of small and medium firms, we examine the legal and business environments, financing channels, and growth patterns of different types of firms in India. Despite the English common-law origin and a British-style judicial system, Indian firms face weak investor protection in practice and poor institutions characterized by corruption and inefficiency. Alternative finance, including financing from all nonbank, nonmarket sources, and generally backed by nonlegal mechanisms, constitutes the most important form of external finance. Bank loans provide the second most important external financing source. Firms with access to bank or market finance are not associated with higher growth rates. Our results indicate that bank and market finance is not superior to alternative finance in fast-growing economies such as India.

DOI
10.1016/j.jfi.2012.01.003
Volume
21
Issue
3
Pages
409-445
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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