UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS ERASMUS UNVERSITY ROTTERDAM HO CHI MINH CITY INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES VIETNAM THE NETHERLANDS VIETNAM – THE NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS DETERMINANTS AFFECT THE ACCESS TO FORMAL- INFORMAL FINANCE AND ITS IMPACT ON SALES GROWTH A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS By HOANG QUYNH TRANG Academic Supervisor: DR. TRUONG DANG THUY HO CHI MINH CITY, Nov. 2016 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com DECLARATION I declare that this thesis is entitled “Determinants affect the probability of access to formal- informal finance and its impact on sales growth” is submitted by me in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Development Economics to the Vietnam – The Netherlands Programme (VNP). This thesis is my original work and under the guidance of my supervision and acknowledgement has been made in the text to all materials used.
Hoang Quynh Trang LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First of all, from the bottom of my heart, I would like to say thanks to my supervisor, Dr. Truong Dang Thuy, who always listens to my ideas, discusses and gives me helpful advices for my thesis. He is also the first teacher who taught me how to process and analyze the data with econometric tools. Although his time is quite limited, he always reminds and encourages me to do this thesis harder.
Again, I deeply say thanks to Dr. Truong Dang Thuy, without you it will take very long time to complete my dissertation. I would like to express my special thanks to Professor Nguyen Trong Hoai, Dr. Pham Khanh Nam and Dr.
Le Van Chon and all lecturers in Viet Nam- Netherland Programme where I received useful knowledge throughout two years, which will positively support for my future work. Finally, I must express my profound attitude to my parents as well as to my better haft for non-stop encouraging me through the process of doing this research. This accomplishment could have not been possible if I did not receive extraordinary support from these people. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABBREVIATIONS CIEM Central Institute Economic Management GDP Gross Domestic Product GSO General Statistic Office MPI Ministry of Planning and Investment IV Instrumental variable OLS Ordinary Least Square SMEs Small and Medium Sized Enterprises LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT Do different sources of finance make different sales growth? In this study, I used a dataset from Small and Medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam in 2013 to explore the determinants affect the probability of access to formal and informal finance and its impact on growth rate.
By employing bivariate probit model and instrumental variable method to solve endogeneity problem, this study finds that while formal finance plays significantly positive role in improving firm performance, informal finance goes on opposite direction on growth rate. Besides, in term of accessibility to official finance, firm size, receiving government assistance and good connection with banks have more advantageous than other factors. Social networks such as network with banks and others also are found significantly positive effect on the probability of obtaining non-official finance. More interestingly, this study also points out that young entrepreneurs are more likely to select informal sector to finance their business operation than the old ones.
Keywords: formal, informal, access to financing, sales growth, Vietnam. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION .4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY .5 THE STRUCTURE OF STUDY. 4 CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW .1 FIRM’S ACCESS TO FINANCE .2 FINANCING CHOICES AND SALES GROWTH. 16 CHAPTER THREE: DATA AND METHODOLOGY .1 Determinants affect firm’s access to finance .2 Financing choices and firm’s growth.
26 CHAPTER FOUR: RESULTS. 37 CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATION. 51 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.3 LIMITATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY .2 Suggestions for further research. 58 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1 Summary of theoretical studies .1 Definition of variables .2 Definition of variables .1 Summary statistics of the sample .2 Sales growth by gender and education .3 Sales growth by the type of ownership .4 Sales growth by region .5 Sales growth by industry .6 Sales growth by financing choices .7 Sales growth by government assistance .8 Determinants of formal/ informal finance accessibility .9 How different sources of finance affect sales growth.
45 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1 Framework for capital structure categorization.1 The expected rate of return of lenders .1 The relationship between sales growth and some continuous variables. 36 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1.1 PROBLEM STATEMENT Small and medium scaled enterprises (SMEs) play a significant role in economic development. Data collected from Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) showed that SMEs contributed about 40% to Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 30% to total export turnover, and 15% to government revenue’s contribution. Furthermore, SMEs also play critical role in term of employment generation and make a job for over 60% employees.
However, according to the report of MPI in 2012, return on revenue of SMEs stayed at 2.8% in 2007 and decreased to 2. In addition, based on the dataset collected from General Statistics Office (GSO) of Vietnam in 2011 showed that SMEs represented just over 43% aggregate gross income of all endeavors and just under 14% aggregate profit before duty. These numbers are quite modest compared to SMEs’ contribution to economy. Capital is one of the most important input factors of any type of manufacturing and business operation.
Furthermore, data about SMEs collected by Central Institute Economic Management (CIEM) in 2013 stated that 741 of more than 2500 enterprises accessed to financing sources, in which firms obtained formal loan accounted for roughly 72%, while this number was approximately recorded at 20.83% for loan from informal sector and combination of two sources, respectively. In addition, out of 662 firms applied for bank loan, there was only 158 firms reported that they experienced problem when getting a loan. This difficulty of SMEs mainly resulted from administrative procedures in obtaining clearance from bank officials and lack of collateral. The positive effect of formal finance on firm performance is proved in many empirical studies.
For example, Ayyagari, Demirgüç-Kunt, and Maksimovic (2010) utilized cross- section data from Chinese firms in 2003 to explore whether there exist the positive role of informal finance on firm performance. These authors claimed that whereas financing from official sector supports higher firm performance, non-official finance does not. Similar finding Page | 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com can be found in the study of Saeed (2009) where the author pointed out that formal financing inserts a positive impact on firm performance while informal abates the outcome. In practice, enterprises could not get money from standard mechanism at the level of 100%, sometimes they have to seek finance from another sector such as their family, partners, relatives or even in the black market to have enough money to finance their business operation.
Along with official source of fund, non-official finance in some empirical studies is also considered as an alternative channel to fill in the demand for finance of firms, especially in developing countries where the weakness of financial and legal system exist. This can be seen clearly through Allen, Chakrabarti, De, and Qian (2012)’s study when they do research for small and medium sized enterprises in India. The authors claimed that non-legal governance mechanisms dominate legal mechanism in solving disputes, overcoming bureaucracies and fostering firm’s performance. In another study, such as Degryse, Lu, and Ongena (2013), the author suggest that the combination of formal and informal fund is an optimal choice for small firms, especially in emerging countries, where asymmetric information is pretty severe.
There are many sources to finance firm’s business operation such as from retained earnings, issuing stocks, borrowing from financial institutions or even combination two-three that of sources. Due to an important role of capital, many empirical studies worldwide investigate the relationship between so-called capital structure and firm performance. The structure of capital describes the way that firms raised their needs to establish or expand their business activities. In other words, capital structure is defined as “the relative amount of debt and equity that firms need to finance” (T.1 presents the categorization of capital structure for further information.
Page | 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.1 Framework for capital structure categorization While there are many empirical studies explore the connection between internal- external finance or bank credit and credit constraint on firm performance, very few papers evaluate the impact of formal and informal finance on sales growth.2 RESEARCH OBJECTIVE - To identify determinants affect probability of access to formal and informal sources of finance - To evaluate how different finance accessibility impacts on sales growth.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS - Which determinants do affect the probability of access to formal and informal finance? - How different sources of fund impact on sales growth? Page | 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY This study will investigate the determinants affect the access to formal and informal finance and its impact on SMEs’ sales growth by using small and medium sized enterprises in Vietnam in 2013. There is a lot of information in this type of dataset, however I just collect the data regarding to the access to formal and informal finance.5 THE STRUCTURE OF STUDY There are five chapters in this study. Chapter 1 describes problem statement, research objective, and scope of the study. Chapter 2 discusses the related literature and previous empirical studies.
Data and methodology are illustrated in chapter 3. For the empirical results we can find in chapter 4, and chapter 5 concludes the research. Page | 4 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW Chapter 2 reviews some related literatures as well as empirical results derived from previous studies in the similar considered problems. The first section presents theories explaining access to finance of firms, as well as a review of empirical studies about this issue.
The review on theories and empirical studies on the impacts of financing choice and sales growth are presented in the next section 2.1 FIRM’S ACCESS TO FINANCE 2.1 Lenders’ behavior in asymmetric information Asymmetric information is construed as one has more advantageous information than the others in the same transaction. The behavior of lender in asymmetric information should be explored firstly to understand the mechanism why some applicants receive loan, but some do not. According to Jaffee and Stiglitz (1990), the expected rate of return of lenders is represented as a function of quoted interest rate, and it has concave shape as in Figure 2.1: Expected rate of return r* r1 Quoted Interest rate Figure 2.1 The expected rate of return of lenders Page | 5 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com where vertical and horizontal axis are represented by expected rate of return of lenders and interest rate, respectively. r* is the optimal interest rate There exists an excess of demand for credit, it is undoubted that lenders will increase their loan interest rate, which is seen as the price has to be paid for borrowing money.
According to the law of demand and supply, an increase in price will lead to a decrease in quantity demanded and a rise in quantity supplied, until market clearing is restored. However, at the optimum quoted interest rate (r*), there is no incentive for lenders to raise the rate of interest. This is because of two reasons: adverse selection and moral hazard, which are discussed hereafter.