Financial structure, corporate savings and current account imbalances

We explore the effects of a country's financial structure on its corporate savings and current account. A financial system that relies relatively more on banks and less on the capital market presents more difficulties for small and medium-sized enterprises to access external finance. These firms find it necessary to accumulate more savings on their own. As a result, countries that have a less developed capital market are more likely to run current account surpluses (or smaller current account deficits). Using panel data of 66 countries for the period 1990-2007, we find consistent and robust evidence in favor of this hypothesis. Further explorations based on firm-level data reveal that firms, especially smaller firms, in economies with relatively underdeveloped capital markets do save significantly more than their counterparts in countries with relatively more developed capital markets.