Abstract This study conducts an empirical investigation of the effects of access to finance on the growth of firms in African countries. In order to achieve this, we made use of a new rich enterprise-level data set from the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys and employ both subjective and objective measures of access to finance. The subjective measure of access to finance is obtained from the ranking of access to finance as no obstacle or severe obstacle to business operations. The objective measure of access to finance is a variable which measures whether firms are constrained in obtaining credit or not. We use data for 10,888 firms across 30 African countries and the results using the subjective measure show that the access to finance constraint exerts a significant negative effect on firm growth. Also, the results using the objective measure show that firms that are not credit constrained experience faster growth than firms which are credit constrained. These results lend credence to the view that financing is very important for firm growth, and justifies the many measures and initiatives being put in place to make more finance available for African firms.

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获得融资和公司绩效的机会：来自非洲国家的证据

摘要本研究对获得金融服务对非洲国家公司成长的影响进行了实证研究。为了实现这一目标，我们利用了来自世界银行企业调查的新的丰富的企业级数据集，并采用了主观和客观的融资渠道。融资渠道的主观衡量标准是从融资渠道对企业运营没有障碍或严重障碍的排名中获得的。获得融资的客观衡量标准是一个变量，用于衡量企业是否在获得信贷方面受到限制。我们使用了30个非洲国家/地区的10,888家公司的数据，使用主观测量的结果表明，获得融资约束对公司的增长产生了显着的负面影响。也，使用客观测度的结果表明，不受信贷约束的公司比受信贷约束的公司经历更快的增长。这些结果使人相信融资对于公司成长非常重要，并证明了为使非洲公司能够获得更多融资而采取的许多措施和举措是合理的。