IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/onb/oenbfi/y2012i3b3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Banking Sector Concentration and Firm Indebtedness: Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe

Author

Listed:
  • Mariya Hake

    (Oesterreichische Nationalbank, Foreign Research Division)

Abstract

Using data from the Amadeus firm-level database, this paper explores the impact of banking sector concentration on corporate debt in the manufacturing sectors in eight Central, Eastern and Southeastern European (CESEE) countries in the precrisis period 2002–2007. Our findings indicate that banking sector concentration has a positive effect, raising firm debt. This confirms the predictions of the relationship lending theory. However, in the CESEE countries with the most concentrated banking markets – such as Estonia and Lithuania – the effect on the corporate leverage ratio is found to be negative. We also show that young firms increase their leverage, while mature firms reduce their dependence on external financing when banking markets are more concentrated. Furthermore, the positive impact of banking sector concentration is weakened by EU accession and greater stock market capitalization, which can be explained by the financial deepening process and the improved availability of alternative sources of external finance.

Suggested Citation

  • Mariya Hake, 2012. "Banking Sector Concentration and Firm Indebtedness: Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe," Focus on European Economic Integration, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank), issue 3, pages 48-68.
    • Handle: RePEc:onb:oenbfi:y:2012:i:3:b:3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.oenb.at/dam/jcr:c449993e-ad0b-4ea9-af2a-383c83ae726d/feei_2012_q3_studies3_tcm16-249597.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jean Pisani-Ferry & Pavle Petrovic & Michael A Landesmann & Vladimir Gligorov & Daniel Daianu & Torbjörn Becker & Zsolt Darvas & André Sapir & Beatrice Weder di Mauro, . "Whither growth in central and eastern Europe? Policy lessons for an integrated Europe," Blueprints, Bruegel, number 453, June.
    2. Stewart C. Myers & Nicholas S. Majluf, 1984. "Corporate Financing and Investment Decisions When Firms Have InformationThat Investors Do Not Have," NBER Working Papers 1396, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Myers, Stewart C. & Majluf, Nicholas S., 1984. "Corporate financing and investment decisions when firms have information that investors do not have," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 187-221, June.
    4. Edward J. Kane & Burton G. Malkiel, 1965. "Bank Portfolio Allocation, Deposit Variability, and the Availability Doctrine," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 79(1), pages 113-134.
    5. Murray Z. Frank & Vidhan K. Goyal, 2009. "Capital Structure Decisions: Which Factors Are Reliably Important?," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 38(1), pages 1-37, March.
    6. Zarutskie, Rebecca, 2006. "Evidence on the effects of bank competition on firm borrowing and investment," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(3), pages 503-537, September.
    7. Agoraki, Maria-Eleni K. & Delis, Manthos D. & Pasiouras, Fotios, 2011. "Regulations, competition and bank risk-taking in transition countries," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 38-48, January.
    8. Eugene F. Fama, 2002. "Testing Trade-Off and Pecking Order Predictions About Dividends and Debt," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 15(1), pages 1-33, March.
    9. Santiago Carbó-Valverde & Francisco Rodríguez-Fernández & Gregory F. Udell, 2009. "Bank Market Power and SME Financing Constraints," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 13(2), pages 309-340.
    10. Brown, Martin & Jappelli, Tullio & Pagano, Marco, 2009. "Information sharing and credit: Firm-level evidence from transition countries," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 151-172, April.
    11. Nicola Cetorelli & Michele Gambera, 2001. "Banking Market Structure, Financial Dependence and Growth: International Evidence from Industry Data," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(2), pages 617-648, April.
    12. Delis, Manthos D., 2010. "Competitive conditions in the Central and Eastern European banking systems," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 38(5), pages 268-274, October.
    13. Beck, Thorsten & Demirguc-Kunt, Asli & Levine, Ross, 2003. "Law and finance: why does legal origin matter?," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 653-675, December.
    14. Mitchell A. Petersen & Raghuram G. Rajan, 1995. "The Effect of Credit Market Competition on Lending Relationships," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(2), pages 407-443.
    15. Jensen, Michael C, 1986. "Agency Costs of Free Cash Flow, Corporate Finance, and Takeovers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(2), pages 323-329, May.
    16. Ernst-Ludwig von Thadden, 1995. "Long-Term Contracts, Short-Term Investment and Monitoring," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 62(4), pages 557-575.
    17. Rajan, Raghuram G & Zingales, Luigi, 1995. "What Do We Know about Capital Structure? Some Evidence from International Data," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(5), pages 1421-1460, December.
    18. Sandra E. Black & Philip E. Strahan, 2002. "Entrepreneurship and Bank Credit Availability," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(6), pages 2807-2833, December.
    19. Anastasiya Shamshur, 2009. "Is the Stability of Leverage Ratios Determined by the Stability of the Economy?," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp393, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    20. Balázs Égert & Peter Backé & Tina Zumer, 2007. "Private-Sector Credit in Central and Eastern Europe: New (Over)Shooting Stars?," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 49(2), pages 201-231, June.
    21. Laurence Booth & Varouj Aivazian & Asli Demirguc‐Kunt & Vojislav Maksimovic, 2001. "Capital Structures in Developing Countries," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(1), pages 87-130, February.
    22. Bikker, Jacob A. & Haaf, Katharina, 2002. "Competition, concentration and their relationship: An empirical analysis of the banking industry," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(11), pages 2191-2214, November.
    23. Demirguc-Kunt, Ash & Maksimovic, Vojislav, 1996. "Stock Market Development and Financing Choices of Firms," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 10(2), pages 341-369, May.
    24. Myers, Stewart C., 1977. "Determinants of corporate borrowing," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 147-175, November.
    25. Hanousek, Jan & Shamshur, Anastasiya, 2011. "A stubborn persistence: Is the stability of leverage ratios determined by the stability of the economy?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(5), pages 1360-1376.
    26. Tullio Jappelli & Marco Pagano, 1999. "Information Sharing in Credit Markets: International Evidence," Research Department Publications 3069, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.
    27. Stiglitz, Joseph E & Weiss, Andrew, 1981. "Credit Rationing in Markets with Imperfect Information," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 393-410, June.
    28. Padilla, A Jorge & Pagano, Marco, 1997. "Endogenous Communication among Lenders and Entrepreneurial Incentives," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 10(1), pages 205-236.
    29. Lieven Baert & Rudi Vander Vennet, 2009. "Bank Ownership, Firm Value and Firm Capital Structure in Europe," Working Paper / FINESS 2.2, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    30. Ralph de Haas & Marga Peeters, 2006. "The dynamic adjustment towards target capital structures of firms in transition economies," The Economics of Transition, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, vol. 14(1), pages 133-169, March.
    31. Carol Ann Northcott, 2004. "Competition in Banking: A Review of the Literature," Staff Working Papers 04-24, Bank of Canada.
    32. Petersen, Mitchell A & Rajan, Raghuram G, 1994. "The Benefits of Lending Relationships: Evidence from Small Business Data," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(1), pages 3-37, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rana El Bahsh & Ali Alattar & Aziz N. Yusuf, 2018. "Firm, Industry and Country Level Determinants of Capital Structure: Evidence from Jordan," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 8(2), pages 175-190.
    2. Tomas Klinger & Petr Teply, 2017. "Agent-Based Risk Assessment Model of the European Banking Network," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp602, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    3. Petr Teply & Tomas Klinger, 2019. "Agent-based modeling of systemic risk in the European banking sector," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 14(4), pages 811-833, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mário Santos & António Moreira & Elisabete Vieira, 2014. "Ownership concentration, contestability, family firms, and capital structure," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 18(4), pages 1063-1107, November.
    2. Rana El Bahsh & Ali Alattar & Aziz N. Yusuf, 2018. "Firm, Industry and Country Level Determinants of Capital Structure: Evidence from Jordan," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 8(2), pages 175-190.
    3. ElBannan, Mona A., 2017. "Stock market liquidity, family ownership, and capital structure choices in an emerging country," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 201-231.
    4. César Camisón & José Antonio Clemente & Sergio Camisón-Haba, 2022. "Asset tangibility, information asymmetries and intangibles as determinants of family firms leverage," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 16(7), pages 2047-2082, October.
    5. İbrahim Yarba & Z. Nuray Güner, 2020. "Leverage dynamics: Do financial development and government leverage matter? Evidence from a major developing economy," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 59(5), pages 2473-2507, November.
    6. María Palacín-Sánchez & Luis Ramírez-Herrera & Filippo di Pietro, 2013. "Capital structure of SMEs in Spanish regions," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 41(2), pages 503-519, August.
    7. Temimi, Akram & Zeitun, Rami & Mimouni, Karim, 2016. "How does the tax status of a country impact capital structure? Evidence from the GCC region," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 37, pages 71-89.
    8. Yildirim, Ramazan & Masih, Mansur & Bacha, Obiyathulla Ismath, 2018. "Determinants of capital structure: evidence from Shari'ah compliant and non-compliant firms," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 198-219.
    9. Gungoraydinoglu, Ali & Öztekin, Özde, 2011. "Firm- and country-level determinants of corporate leverage: Some new international evidence," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(5), pages 1457-1474.
    10. Valeriya Valer’evna Metel’skaya, 2021. "Correlation-and-regression analysis of the influence of macroeconomic factors on capital structure of Russian corporations under crisis conditions," Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Springer, vol. 10(1), pages 1-34, December.
    11. Haitham A. Al‐Zoubi & Jennifer A. O'Sullivan & Aktham I. Al‐Maghyereh & Brendan J. Lambe, 2023. "Disentangling Sentiment from Cyclicality in Firm Capital Structure," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 59(2), pages 570-605, June.
    12. Belkhir, Mohamed & Maghyereh, Aktham & Awartani, Basel, 2016. "Institutions and corporate capital structure in the MENA region," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 99-129.
    13. Zeitun, Rami & Temimi, Akram & Mimouni, Karim, 2017. "Do financial crises alter the dynamics of corporate capital structure? Evidence from GCC countries," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 21-33.
    14. González, Vi­ctor M. & González, Francisco, 2008. "Influence of bank concentration and institutions on capital structure: New international evidence," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 363-375, September.
    15. Dang, Viet Anh & Kim, Minjoo & Shin, Yongcheol, 2014. "Asymmetric adjustment toward optimal capital structure: Evidence from a crisis," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 226-242.
    16. Kamal Naser & Abdullah Al-Mutairi & Ahmad Al Kandari & Rana Nuseibeh, 2015. "Cogency of Capital Structure Theories to an Islamic Country: Empirical Evidence from the Kuwaiti Banks," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 5(4), pages 979-988.
    17. Muhammad Yusuf Amin & Amanat Ali & Bashir Khan, 2019. "Capital Structure of Chinese Firms Across different Sectors: Does Ownership Structure Matter?," Global Economics Review, Humanity Only, vol. 4(2), pages 70-82, June.
    18. Mohamed, Hisham Hanifa & Masih, Mansur & Bacha, Obiyathulla I., 2015. "Why do issuers issue Sukuk or conventional bond? Evidence from Malaysian listed firms using partial adjustment models," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 233-252.
    19. Michael Pfaffermayr & Matthias Stöckl & Hannes Winner, 2013. "Capital Structure, Corporate Taxation and Firm Age," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 34(1), pages 109-135, March.
    20. Feld, Lars P. & Heckemeyer, Jost H. & Overesch, Michael, 2013. "Capital structure choice and company taxation: A meta-study," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 2850-2866.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Firm leverage; banking sector concentration; Central; Eastern and Southeastern Europe; firm-level data;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • O52 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Europe

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:onb:oenbfi:y:2012:i:3:b:3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Elisabeth Beckmann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/oenbbat.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.