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Title: Financing industrial corporations in a developing economy: panel evidence from Imperial Russia
This article explores the financing of early industrial corporations using newly constructed panel data from Imperial Russian balance sheets. We document how corporate capital structures and dividend payout policies reflected internal agency issues, information asymmetries with external investors, life cycle considerations, and other frictions present in the Russian context. In particular, we find that widely held, listed and more profitable corporations were less reliant on debt financing. Asset tangibility was associated with lower debt levels, suggesting that Russian corporate debt was short-term, collateral was largely irrelevant, or agency problems dominated. Finally, we find that many of these same issues, for example ownership structure and access to securities markets, also mattered for financial performance and that dividends may have compensated investors for poor legal protections.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1658877
PAR ID:
10532668
Author(s) / Creator(s):
;
Publisher / Repository:
Cambridge University Press
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Financial History Review
Volume:
30
Issue:
2
ISSN:
0968-5650
Page Range / eLocation ID:
125 to 161
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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