The Effects of Financial Constraints on Investments in Korean Stock Market

Purpose - This paper empirically investigates what factors contribute to corporate investments under financial constraint condition in the Korean stock market. In the paper, tangible assets’ growth rate and fixed assets’ growth rate were employed as investment performance and total assets were also used for comparison purpose. Research design and methodology - Samples are constructed by manufacturing firms listed on the stock market of Korea as well as those who settle accounts in December from 2001 to 2018. Financial institutions are excluded from the sample as their accounting procedures, governance and regulations differ. This study adopted a fixed panel regression model to assess the sample construction including yearly and cross-sectional data. Results - This results support the literatures that major shareholders showed positive significance to investment in financially unconstrained firms and no significance to investment in financially constrained firms. ROA showed positive significance to investment in financially unconstrained and constrained firms, whereas firm size showed negative significance to investment in financially unconstrained and constrained firms. Debt showed no positive significance to investment in financially unconstrained firms and negative significance to investment in financially constrained firms. Conclusions - This paper documented evidence that ROA and firm size are important factors to investment irrespective of firms’ financial constraints. And this paper also supports that major shareholders give positive impact to investments in financially unconstrained firms. This means that financial constraints itself rule corporate’ investment decision in financially constrained firms.