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Business Networks, Firm Connectivity and Firm Policies

Authors: Janet Gao;

Business Networks, Firm Connectivity and Firm Policies

Abstract

I examine firm financial policies under a network structure of customer-supplier relationships. In this network, negative economic shocks that occur to one firm can affect other firms' profitability through their relationship-specific connections, leading to a contagion effect. I demonstrate theoretically that when external financing is costly, firms connected to the distressed firms will find it optimal to extend financing in order to preserve their relationship-specific synergies. Empirically, I show that firms strongly connected in the network will choose more conservative financial policies. Using firms' closeness centrality in the network as a proxy for the strength of their connections, I find that central firms choose lower leverage, higher cash holdings, and lower payout. To alleviate potential endogeneity concerns, I use mergers of firms' secondary neighbors to instrument for network structure changes. Compared to withdrawn mergers, the secondary neighbors of mergers experience increases in closeness, which lead them to adopt more conservative financial policies following the mergers.Finally, to validate the channels behind my results, I use several exogenous shocks including 9/11 and show that firms closely related to the distressed firms increase their trade credit demand and reduce their investment following negative shocks.

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Powered by OpenAIRE graph
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selected citations
These citations are derived from selected sources.
This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Citations provided by BIP!
popularity
This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Popularity provided by BIP!
influence
This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Influence provided by BIP!
impulse
This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Impulse provided by BIP!
5
Average
Average
Average
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