Overall, our results suggest that reliance on bank financing plays an important role in explaining the
weaker asset growth effect in the Asian markets relative to the U.S. market, as well as in explaining the
differential asset growth effects across the Asian markets. Recall that bank financing may affect the asset
growth anomaly via two channels — banks may serve as efficient monitors to reduce overinvestment; they
may also limit credit provision and thus cause firms' under-investments. Some of our results are indicative
of the second channel — for example, reliance on bank financing results in homogeneity in the growth rates
across firms. However, on many other aspects, the two channels may produce quite similar effects and
therefore difficult to identify separately. Specifically, consider their effects on growth persistence and
profitability. First, by reducing firms' overinvestment tendency, bank financing may result in persistent
growth and profitability. Second, if the dominance of the banking system results in frequent credit
rationing and thus simply limiting the growth of all firms, we may also observe persistent growth andprofitability. This is because facing financing constraints, firms may rank their investments and only invest
in those most profitable ones given their available capital. The bottom line is that, unless an optimal firmlevel
investment could be identified, it is difficult to separate the overinvestment-curbing effect from the
financing constraint effect