World Bank

About: World Bank is a other organization based out in Washington D.C., District of Columbia, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Poverty. The organization has 7813 authors who have published 21594 publications receiving 1198361 citations. The organization is also known as: World Bank, WB & The World Bank.

Prices, Plant Size, and Product Quality

Abstract: Drawing on uncommonly rich and representative data from the Colombian manufacturing census, this paper documents new empirical relationships between input prices, output prices, and plant size and proposes a model of endogenous input and output quality choices by heterogeneous firms to explain the observed patterns. The key empirical facts are that, on average within narrowly defined sectors, (1) larger plants charge more for their outputs and (2) larger plants pay more for their material inputs. The latter fact generalizes the well-known positive correlation between plant size and wages. Similar correlations hold between prices and export status. We show that the empirical patterns are consistent with a parsimonious extension of the Melitz (2003, “The Impact of Trade on Intra-Industry Reallocations and Aggregate Industry Productivity,” Econometrica, 71 , 1695–1725) framework to include endogenous choice of input and output quality. Using a measure of the scope for quality differentiation from Sutton (1998, Technology and Market Structure: Theory and History . Cambridge: MIT Press), we show that differences across sectors in the relationships between prices and plant size are consistent with our model. Available evidence suggests that differences in observable measures of market power do not provide a complete explanation for the empirical patterns. We interpret the results as supportive of the hypothesis that quality differences of both inputs and outputs play an important role in generating the price–plant size correlations.

Formal versus Informal Finance: Evidence from China

Abstract: China is often mentioned as a counter-example to the findings in the finance and growth literature since, despite the weaknesses in its banking system, it is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. The fast growth of Chinese private sector firms is taken as evidence that it is alternative financing and governance mechanisms that support China's growth. This paper takes a closer look at firm financing patterns and growth using a database of 2,400 Chinese firms. The authors find that a relatively small percentage of firms in the sample utilize formal bank finance with a much greater reliance on informal sources. However, the results suggest that despite its weaknesses, financing from the formal financial system is associated with faster firm growth, whereas fund raising from alternative channels is not. Using a selection model, the authors find no evidence that these results arise because of the selection of firms that have access to the formal financial system. Although firms report bank corruption, there is no evidence that it significantly affects the allocation of credit or the performance of firms that receive the credit. The findings suggest that the role of reputation and relationship based financing and governance mechanisms in financing the fastest growing firms in China is likely to be overestimated.

Trade Credit, Financial Intermediary Development and Industry Growth

Abstract: Where do firms turn for financing in countries with poorly developed financial markets? One source is trade credit. And where formal financial intermediaries are deficient, industries that rely more on this source of financing grow faster. Recent empirical work has shown that financial development is important for economic growth, since well-developed financial markets are more effective at allocating capital to firms with high-value projects. This raises the question of whether firms with high-return projects in countries with poorly developed financial institutions are able to draw on alternative sources of capital to offset the effects of deficient (formal) financial intermediaries. Recent work suggests that implicit borrowing in the form of trade credit may provide one such source of funds. Using the methodology of Rajan and Zingales (1998), Fisman and Love show that in countries with relatively weak financial institutions, industries with greater dependence on trade credit financing (measured by the ratio of accounts payable to total assets) grow faster than industries that rely less on such credit. Furthermore, consistent with the notion that young firms may not use trade credit, the authors show that most of the effect they report comes from growth in preexisting firms rather than from an increase in the number of firms. This paper has also been published in the Journal of Finance. This paper - a product of Finance, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to study the determinants of access to finance.

Maximum likelihood estimation of endogenous switching regression models

Abstract: This article describes the movestay Stata command, which implements the maximum likelihood method to fit the endogenous switching regression model.