Hành vi hối lộ, tiếp cận tín dụng, sức mạnh đàm phán của doanh nghiệp và sức ép cạnh tranh trên thị trường: bằng chứng từ số liệu doanh nghiệp đa quốc gia

BRIBERY, CREDIT ACCESS, BARGAINING POWER 
AND MARKET COMPETITION: EVIDENCE FROM 
CROSS-COUNTRY FIRM-LEVEL DATA
HÀNH VI HỐI LỘ, TIẾP CẬN TÍN DỤNG, SỨC MẠNH ĐÀM PHÁN
CỦA DOANH NGHIỆP VÀ SỨC ÉP CẠNH TRANH 
TRÊN THỊ TRƯỜNG: BẰNG CHỨNG TỪ SỐ LIỆU 
DOANH NGHIỆP ĐA QUỐC GIA
Dr. Le Thanh Ha; Dao Hanh Le; Nguyen Ngoc Mai
National Economics University
lethanhha@neu.edu.vn
Abstract
This paper used the multi-country firm-level data covering 104 countries for the period
from 2010 to 2019 to investigate the effects of bribery on credit access for firms holding bargain-
ing power and/or facing market competition. We used firms’ size and legal status to capture their
bargaining power, while the levels of market competition were analyzed according to the number
of competitors in the same working field. Our empirical results provided evidence to support the
“greasing-the-wheels-of-credit access” hypothesis. Furthermore, the effects of bribery become
stronger for larger-sized or formally-registered firms, and those facing no market competition.
These effects also become pronounced if we controlled the endogeneity problem.
Keywords: Bribery, Credit Access, Bargaining Power, Market Competition, Cross-country
Firm-level.
Tóm tắt
Nghiên cứu này sử dụng dữ liệu doanh nghiệp đa quốc gia, bao gồm 104 quốc gia trong
giai đoạn từ 2010 tới 2019 để nghiên cứu tác động của hành vi đút lót tới việc tiếp cận tài chính
của doanh nghiệp sở hữu sức mạnh đàm phán và/hoặc hoạt động trên thị trường có nhiều cạnh
tranh. Chúng tôi sử dụng kích thước doanh nghiệp và trạng thái pháp lý để ghi nhận sức mạnh
đàm phán của doanh nghiệp, trong khi chúng tôi sử dụng thông tin về số lượng đối thủ cạnh
tranh trên cùng lĩnh vực để đánh giá mức độ cạnh tranh trên thị trường mà doanh nghiệp hoạt
động. Kết quả thực nghiệm chỉ ra bằng chứng ủng hộ giả thuyết bôi trơn để được tiếp cận các
nguồn tài chính, tín dụng. Ngoài ra, tác động của hành vi đút lót trở nên mạnh hơn đối với
doanh nghiệp có quy mô lớn hoặc doanh nghiệp đăng ký kinh doanh chính thức, hoặc doanh
nghiệp không bị sức ép cạnh tranh quá lớn. Tác động cũng trở nên mạnh hơn khi cúng tôi kiểm
soát vấn đề nội sinh.
Từ khóa: Hối lộ, tiếp cận tín dụng, sức mạnh đàm phán của doanh nghiệp, cạnh tranh
trên thị trường 1.
1. Introduction
Undoubtedly, a capital plays an essential role for firms in contributing to the sustainable
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growth and efficiency in firms’ operation activities, along with labors and technology (Aghion
and Howitt, 2007). In addition to equity capital, firms use debt capital such as bank credit for
their business activities. Accordingly, the access conditions to bank credit are important for the
survival and development of both small-medium sized (SMEs) and large firms (Levine et al.,
2000). Specifically, the micro and small firms make up for a large proportion of the developing
economy (De Mel et al., 2009; Nichter and Goldmark, 2009) and financial constraints are con-
sidered as a major obstacle for their daily business operations (Ayyagari et al., 2008; Beck and
Demirguc-Kunt, 2008). However, the rigid financial system can create lots of challenges for
firm to meets the conditions of financial institutions to issue the loans (Liu et al., 2020). Under
this circumstance, firms may experience inefficient resource allocations and show the poor per-
formance.
In many countries, the government interferes in the economy by laws or regulations, there-
fore, the quality of institutional environment not only plays an important role in credit market
but also affect firms’ credit registrations (Galli et al., 2017). A great deal of papers studies the de-
terminants of the quality of institutional environment such as performance in practicing laws (La
Porta et al., 1997; Djankov et al., 2008). Firms may face difficulties to satisfy the requirements
stemming from legal regulations requested by the government. Under this circumstance, paying
bribes, with hardly any other choice is considered as a strategic behavior that allows firms to
avoid the constraints from both the governments and banks (Zhou and Peng, 2012). Since bribery
often happens in countries where the government involves in the economy (Klitgaard, 1988) or
public servants possess low wages (Kraay and Van Rijckeghem, 1995), bribery can be served as
a powerful tool for firms to help them to connect with public officials, then control their private
benefits (Martin et al., 2007).
In the literature, prior scholars have investigated the association between bribery and credit
access. For example, Fungacova et al. (2015) provided empirical results that bribery has signif-
icantly positive impacts on total firms’ bank debt in the short-term but negative impact in the
long-term. Şeker and Yang (2014) claim that making informal payments such as bribery may cre-
ate bigger burdens on the developmen ... nsive sector
remain quite similar to each other. Table 10 also shows that there is no significant difference in
effects of bribery on the probability of accessing credit across sectors.
Table 10: Estimation results of sub-sample by sector
Robust standard errors in parentheses
*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1
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VARIABLES
Supplier-dominated Scale-intensive Science-based
CA CA CA CA CA CA
DBri 0.21*** 0.21*** 0.24***
(0.050) (0.072) (0.058)
Bri 0.09*** 0.08* 0.09***
(0.026) (0.039) (0.032)
RD 0.32*** 0.32*** 0.29*** 0.29*** 0.37*** 0.37***
(0.035) (0.035) (0.052) (0.052) (0.038) (0.038)
Export 0.32*** 0.32*** 0.37*** 0.37*** 0.24*** 0.24***
(0.037) (0.037) (0.060) (0.060) (0.044) (0.044)
LnSalecap 0.10*** 0.10*** 0.08*** 0.08*** 0.12*** 0.12***
(0.011) (0.011) (0.017) (0.017) (0.014) (0.014)
State 0.13 0.14 -1.64 -1.66 -0.13 -0.08
(0.651) (0.648) (1.236) (1.234) (0.828) (0.827)
Foreign -0.40*** -0.40*** -0.34*** -0.34*** -0.46*** -0.46***
(0.069) (0.068) (0.109) (0.109) (0.080) (0.080)
LnAge 0.02 0.02 0.00 0.00 0.07*** 0.08***
(0.021) (0.021) (0.034) (0.034) (0.026) (0.026)
LnManager 0.05** 0.05** 0.12*** 0.12*** 0.07** 0.06**
(0.025) (0.025) (0.039) (0.039) (0.031) (0.031)
Size 0.00*** 0.00*** 0.00*** 0.00*** 0.00*** 0.00***
(0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000)
Constant -2.06*** -2.06*** -1.23** -1.21** -2.79*** -2.78***
(0.268) (0.268) (0.547) (0.547) (0.422) (0.420)
Observations 9,421 9,421 4,373 4,373 6,652 6,652
Pseudo R2 0.197 0.197 0.186 0.185 0.200 0.199
5.3. IV Estimation
Until now, we have not dealt with the endogeneity issue that might cause our estimation
results to be biased. We, therefore, concentrate on this issue in this part. We follow Wellalage et
al. (2020) to use the sector-country average bribing amount (GBri_ivb and GBri_ivr) and firm’s
attitude toward the level of judiciary system corruption (Weak_Judiciary) as our instruments. We
then re-investigate the effects of bribery on the probability of credit access by employing instru-
mental variable probit models. We construct two sets of instruments: (GBri_ivb and Weak_Judi-
ciary) for DBri and (GBri_ivr and Weak_Judiciary) for Bri. 
The results of the IV regression on full sample and sub-sample are displayed in Table 11.
Comparing to the benchmark estimation results in Table 5, our hypothesis about the effects of
bribery in credit access remains unchanged. All coefficients’ signs stay steadily with our earlier
estimations, but the marginal effects are substantially greater. These results firmly reinforce our
argument about the existence of “greasing the wheel of credit access” hypothesis.
Overall, the results coming from this IV model estimation strengthen our main conclusion
that bribery has positive effect on firm credit access. When contemplating endogeneity issue, the
influence of bribery on credit access is notably greater. 
Table 11: IV model estimation
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VARIABLES
(1) (2) (5) (6)
CA GDBri CA GBri
GDBri 0.45***
(0.119)
GBri 0.17***
(0.062)
RD 0.32*** 0.01*** 0.32*** 0.03***
(0.023) (0.005) (0.023) (0.009)
Export 0.33*** 0.02*** 0.33*** 0.03***
(0.025) (0.005) (0.025) (0.010)
LnSalecap 0.11*** -0.01*** 0.11*** -0.02***
(0.007) (0.002) (0.007) (0.003)
State -0.61 0.10 -0.58 0.17
(0.472) (0.096) (0.472) (0.180)
Foreign -0.36*** -0.02** -0.37*** -0.02
(0.045) (0.009) (0.045) (0.017)
LnAge 0.03** 0.00 0.04** 0.00
(0.014) (0.003) (0.014) (0.005)
LnManager 0.08*** -0.01*** 0.08*** -0.02***
(0.017) (0.003) (0.017) (0.006)
Standard errors in parentheses
*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1
6. Conclusion
This paper represented an attempt to seek the answer to the question of how bribery affects
firms’ credit access in developing markets. We used a firm-level cross-country dataset covering
104 countries for the period from 2010 to 2019 to provide empirical evidence to support the
“greasing-the-wheels of credit access” hypothesis. Furthermore, we have shown that the effects
of bribery on firms’ accessibility to credit were heterogeneous. In particular, the effect of bribery
was especially strong for either larger-sized as well as formally-registered firms or those facing
no competition or operating in low-level market competition. 
The findings of this study suggest some policy implications. In the developing countries
characterized by weak and poor quality of institutions, firms’ scale and legalization are the key
factors determining the ability of firms to access finance. Our study suggests increasing firm
credit access relies mainly on government assistance. The government should take plans to sup-
port and help firms to expand their business. The administration procedure and the legal barriers
regarding business registration can be alleviated. Moreover, a market competition plays an im-
portant role on promoting the ability of firms to access financial markets, therefore, the govern-
ment should also propose policies to reduce the market competition in a typical market.
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