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Bribes, market power and access to credit: evidence from cross-country firm-level data

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A Correction to this article was published on 06 November 2021

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Abstract

This paper used multi-country firm-level data covering 104 countries for the period from 2010 to 2019 to investigate the effects of bribery on credit access for firms holding bargaining power and/or facing market competition. We used firms’ size and legal status to capture their bargaining power, while the levels of market competition were analyzed according to the number of competitors in the same working field. Our empirical results provided evidence to support the “greasing-the-wheels-of-credit access” hypothesis. Furthermore, the effects of bribery become stronger for larger-sized or formally registered firms, and those facing no market competition. These effects also become pronounced if we controlled the endogeneity problem.

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Notes

  1. Based on the questionnaire about the number of competitors, we select five competitors to define the low and high level of competition.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Economics University, Hanoi, Vietnam

    Le Thanh Ha, Dao Hanh Le & Nguyen Ngoc Mai

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  1. Le Thanh Ha
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  2. Dao Hanh Le
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  3. Nguyen Ngoc Mai
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Correspondence to Le Thanh Ha.

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Appendix: List of country in the data

Appendix: List of country in the data

Afghanistan

Colombia

Indonesia

Montenegro

Suriname

Albania

Costa Rica

Iran

Morocco

Tajikistan

Angola

Côte d'Ivoire

Iraq

Mozambique

Tanzania

Argentina

Croatia

Jamaica

Myanmar

Thailand

Armenia

Djibouti

Jordan

Namibia

Timor-Leste

Azerbaijan

Dominica

Kazakhstan

Nepal

Togo

Bangladesh

DRC

Kenya

Nicaragua

Tunisia

Belarus

Ecuador

Kosovo

Niger

Uganda

Benin

Egypt

Kyrgyz Republic

Nigeria

Ukraine

Bhutan

El Salvador

Lao P.D.R

Pakistan

Uruguay

Bolivia

Eswatini

Lebanon

Panama

Uzbekistan

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Ethiopia

Lesotho

Paraguay

Venezuela

Botswana

Fiji

Liberia

Peru

Vietnam

Brazil

Gambia

Libya

Philippines

Yemen

Bulgaria

Georgia

FYR Macedonia

Rwanda

Zambia

Burkina Faso

Ghana

Madagascar

Senegal

Zimbabwe

Burundi

Guatemala

Malawi

Serbia

 

Cambodia

Guinea

Malaysia

Sierra Leone

 

Cameroon

Guinea-Bissau

Mauritania

South Africa

 

Chad

Honduras

Mexico

South Sudan

 

Chile

Hungary

Moldova

Sri Lanka

 

China

India

Mongolia

Sudan

 

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Ha, L.T., Le, D.H. & Mai, N.N. Bribes, market power and access to credit: evidence from cross-country firm-level data. Int Rev Econ 68, 527–550 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12232-021-00381-1

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