Local Financial Development and Firm Performance: Evidence from Morocco

Abstract

Combining data from the Moroccan census of manufcaturing enterprises with information from a commune survey, we test whether firm expansion is affected by local financial development. Our findings are consistent with this hypothesis: local bank availability is robustly associated with faster growth for small and medium-size firms in sectors with growth opportunities, with a lower likelihood of firm exit and a higher likelihood of investment. The findings also suggests a channel for the effect of the availability of financing in firm growth in our data, namely that access to credit was used to invest in labor saving technology.manufacturing, credit constraint, firm size