Are institutions a driver or an obstacle to development of local currency corporate bond markets?

We analyze institutional determinants of the development of local currency (LCY) corporate bond markets in the period from 2010 to 2016. We consider a wide range of indicators of the quality of institutional environment: the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom, the Worldwide governance indicators, the World Economic Forum’s indicators of corporate culture, development and regulation of financial markets. Unlike most previous studies, we test not only static regression models (multifactor linear regressions), but also dynamic models based on the generalized method of moments, which allows to solve the problem of endogeneity of variables. The results show that low quality of institutional environment, macroeconomic and financial instability stimulate growth of the share of LCY corporate bonds in the total issuance volume. In the periods of instability LCY corporate bonds become less attractive for foreign investors, and issuers are forced to raise capital in the domestic market. The most significant factors in both static and dynamic model specifications are the World Bank’s indicators of regulatory quality and rule of law. A decline in sovereign credit ratings also gives impetus to the development of LCY corporate bond markets. An original result is that more developed stock markets suppress the growth of LCY corporate bond markets: equity and corporate bonds are competing financing sources for companies from developing countries. A developed banking sector contributes to the growth of the LCY corporate bond market: banks act as dealers and market makers. Devaluation of the national currency has a significant positive influence on the explained variable. © 2017 International Business Information Management Association IBIMA. All Rights Reserved.