The Capital Structure Decisions of New Firms
Alicia Robb2014, Review of Financial Studies
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Abstract
This paper investigates the capital structure choices that firms make in their initial year of operation, using restricted-access data from the Kauffman Firm Survey. Contrary to many accounts of startup activity, the firms in our data rely heavily on external debt sources such as bank financing, and less extensively on friends and family-based funding sources. This fact is robust to numerous controls for credit quality, industry, and business owner characteristics. The heavy reliance on external debt underscores the importance of well functioning credit markets for the success of nascent business activity.
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Corporate Social Responsibility and Crowdfunding: The Experience of the Colectual Platform in Empowering Economic and Sustainable Projects
Sustainability, 2020
In recent years, sustainable crowdfunding has been one of the key elements in the search for new sources of financing. This has involved eliminating financial barriers and intermediaries, bringing entrepreneurs’ projects closer to fund providers, and thus instigating changes in traditional investment and profitability parameters. Among these indicators, the sustainable business return and its relationship with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) could be a relevant factor to improve the cost of funding, to explain the return on assets (ROA), and, consequently, impacting on the return on equity (ROE). In this context, this paper takes as a reference 101 projects that are part of Colectual’s lending. We analyze factors such as sustainability—the application of CSR across a social responsibility index; the financial characteristics of the company—liquidity, leverage, and solvency; and the characteristics of the loans related to crowdfunding—amount, maturity, and charge rate of the lo...
The determinants of debt financing: The case of fintech start-ups
Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, 2021
The purpose of this paper is to explore determinants of the debt financing of FinTech start-ups. Using a new hand-collected multisource database that maps FinTech start-ups incorporated in the UK from 2010 to 2015, this study examines how the characteristics of FinTech start-ups affect the types of financing used in the first three years after incorporation. The novelty of this study consists in the identification and analysis of the determinants that enable FinTech start-ups to obtain long-term debt and hence to finance their growth. The analysis is primarily conducted via a Tobit regression model. This paper contributes to the literature since we still have limited understanding of the financing of FinTech firms, even if academic literature examining the financing of start-ups has expanded in the last few years. The results from the empirical analysis demonstrate that unregulated FinTech start-ups are more likely to be financed with long-term debt. Asset structure, owner characteristics and the specific FinTech activity influence the funding source. Moreover, FinTech startups backed by equity investors receive less long-term debt funding than their peers. A better understanding of the debt financing of FinTech start-ups provides managers with valuable insights into ways of managing their firms. Furthermore, our results have relevant implications for the employment, competition and innovation, given the role that start-ups generally play in the economy. The study is limited to a sample of Fin-Tech start-ups incorporated in an advanced economy, and thus the generalization of the presented results to developing economies will require caution.
Will Strangers Help you Enter? The Effect of Foreign Bank Presence on New Firm Entry
Journal of Financial Services Research, 2018
We examine the effect of foreign bank presence on new firm entry in 83 economies over the 2005-2013 period. The empirical findings show that foreign bank presence exerts a positive and significant effect on firm entry. This effect subdues in countries with strong creditor rights, while it strengthens in economies with high depth of credit information sharing. In further analysis, we find that the type of credit information sharing provider matters. The positive effect of foreign bank presence on firm entry strengthens in the presence of a private credit bureau, whereas it subdues in the presence of a public credit registry. Finally, we find some evidence that cultural and information sharing distance between home and host economies weakens the positive effect of foreign bank presence on firm entry. In terms of policy, attracting foreign banks while strengthening credit information sharing through private credit bureaus could benefit entrepreneurship in host economies.
How Alternative Finance Informs Central Themes in Corporate Finance
Social Science Research Network, 2020
This paper investigates three areas of corporate finance, and the role of alternative finance in contributing to our understanding of these areas. First, we look at disclosure, information asymmetry, and adverse selection, and how different alternative finance solutions are used to mitigate these issues. Second, we examine moral hazard and risk taking and how these behaviours are shaped by new types of alternative finance. Third, we consider the role of control rights, and show how their importance varies by context including types of alternative finance and the country-level institutional setting.
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