ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the impact of bank competition on access to credit by informal firms in 14 Sub Saharan African countries using World Bank enterprise survey data. Access to credit is one of the main factors identified as hindering the growth of these opaque borrowers with poor financial transparency. This study uses a binary choice probit model to estimate the probability or likelihood of accessing finance conditional on the level of bank competition and other firm-level characteristics. Results show that the impact of competition measured using the recent and empirically robust Boone indicator is negative and significant in line with the market power hypothesis. These results suggest that improving the competitiveness of the banking sector by encouraging entrance of more players and curbing anti-competitive conducts should be promoted without compromising the soundness of the sector. Reducing or minimizing information asymmetry using public credit registries is good for enhancing financial access and governments should invest resources on maintaining, updating and increasing the coverage of these registries.

摘要

本文利用世界银行企业调查数据调查了 14 个撒哈拉以南非洲国家的银行竞争对非正规公司获得信贷的影响。获得信贷是阻碍这些财务透明度差的不透明借款人发展的主要因素之一。本研究使用二元选择概率模型来估计获得金融的概率或可能性，条件是银行竞争水平和其他公司层面的特征。结果表明，根据市场力量假设，使用最近且经验丰富的 Boone 指标衡量的竞争影响为负且显着。这些结果表明，应在不损害银行业稳健性的情况下，通过鼓励更多参与者进入和遏制反竞争行为来提高银行业的竞争力。使用公共信用登记减少或最小化信息不对称有利于提高金融准入，政府应投入资源维护、更新和扩大这些登记的覆盖范围。