Essays on corporate finance and political economy

Abstract

The first chapter of this dissertation investigates how financial frictions affect companies' product market decisions. As different products have different production cycles, I find that companies focus on products entailing short cash flow maturity as a way of alleviating financial constraints. The second chapter focuses on a randomized controlled trial where a financial education course was offered to managers of medium and large companies in Mozambique. The results suggest that financial education improves corporate practices and performance. The final chapter analyses the impact of information on electoral behaviour. We expose 1800 participants to information about central government performance and evaluate its impact on voting in local elections.