Corporate Financial Constraints and Internal Capital Markets: Evidence from Emerging Countries

Abstract

This paper investigates whether the internal capital markets of business groups mitigate the financial constraints of affiliated firms,and affect their financing policies.It aims to extend the evidence on internal capital markets to emerging countries where financing constraints are prevalent, and adds to the literature on trade credit by revealing that the distressed group-affiliated firms rely less on trade credit than their non-affiliated counterparts despite the positive relation between trade credit and distress. Group firms that have high investments in prior periods use less trade credit in the subsequent periods than non-affiliated firms. The study rests on panel data regressions covering 3906 firms from six emerging countries for the 2006-2012 period. The findings indicate that the Q-sensitivity of the investments of affiliated firms is lower than that of their unaffiliated counterparts in all countries and that the investment cash flow sensitivity of affiliates is lower in five countries, strongly indicating that group-affiliated firms are financially less constrained. The distressed group firms use significantly lower leverage than distressed unaffiliated firms despite the positive relation between distress and leverage. Group firms in high–Q industries invest less than unaffiliated firms. This paper contributes to the existing literature on internal capital markets by expanding the scope to emerging countries where market imperfections and financing constraints are more pronounced, and provides strong evidence for the role of business groups, prevalent in most emerging countries, in mitigating the constraints on the investments and financing choices of the group-affiliated firms.