National Variation in Financing Patterns

Throughout this chapter, we focus on firms that are not listed on stock exchanges our special emphasis is on large firms that may exhibit information asymmetries and agency costs because such companies are most likely to experience corporate governance problems (i.e. expropriation of value at the expense of minority shareholders). More specifically, by “large firms” we mean those that are relatively similar in size to listed firms in the same country. Thus, we focus on widely held, non-listed companies that may be of interest to policy-makers and regulators.