TY  - JOUR
AU  - Johnson,Simon
AU  - McMillan,John
AU  - Woodruff,Christopher
TI  - Property Rights and Finance
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 8852
PY  - 2002
Y2  - March 2002
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8852
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8852.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Simon Johnson
MIT Sloan School of Management
100 Main Street, E52-562
Cambridge, MA 02142
Tel: 617/290-9618
Fax: 617/253-2660
E-Mail: sjohnson@mit.edu

John McMillan
E-Mail: N/A user is deceased

Christopher Woodruff
Department of Economics
University of Warwick
Coventry  CV4 7AL
UK
Tel: 44 787 258 2800
Fax: 44 024 7652 3032
E-Mail: c.woodruff@warwick.ac.uk
AB  - Which is the tighter constraint on private sector investment: weak property rights or limited access to external finance?  From a survey of new firms in post-communist countries, we find that weak property rights discourage firms from reinvesting their profits, even when bank loans are available.  Where property rights are relatively strong, firms reinvest their profits; where they are relatively weak, entrepreneurs do not want to invest from retained earnings.
ER  -