This paper is aimed to examine the impact of bail-out policy carried out following the financial crisis which hit the Malaysian economy some years ago. Using panel estimation methods, this study tries to analyze the relationship between firms‟ investments and their cash flows before and after the crisis period. Theoretically, the relationship becomes tight due to the crisis. This tight relationship indicates the existence of severe financial constraints faced by existing firms. Such relationship is on the contrast to the loose relationship prior the crisis when the financial market was liberalized through various deregulations including the interest rates deregulation. However, to combat the crisis Malaysia carried out a variety of counter-crisis measures. The measures are packaged under the bail-out policy implementation. If the bail-out policy was a success, it can be measured through the easiness of financial constraints the firms faced. Using annual financial data of unbalanced panel of 1988-2005, the results found are in favor of the bail-out policy.

This article empirically investigates the presence of financial constraints in the Malaysian capital market. The existence of financial constraints gives firm less access to external funds to finance their investment activities. Therefore, the constrained firm has to rely on internal sources of financing. The severity of financial constraints is relatively different according to firm size. Hence, the sample is divided into large and small firm subsamples. Using the Q model of investment, the results show that financial constraints are present in the Malaysian market using the full sample. The subsample results however show that large firms are not financially constrained. On the other hand, the smaller firms are facing the constraints in their investment decisions.

This paper investigates the presence of financial constraints among firms in Malaysia using firm level panel data analysis. The empirical results based on panel GMM demonstrate that financial constraints are present in the market, which indicate that the firms are unable to access to external forms of financing. In addition, the presence also signifies the presence of asymmetric information problem between the firm and its financer. Thus, the neoclassical investment theory which based on assumption of complete information such that only factor prices and technology determine firm’s desired capital stock is simply rejected. Eventually, their investments are much affected by fluctuations in their cash flows or retained earnings.

The 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis affected the balance sheets of many Malaysian firms, which increased the financial constraints on such firms. To counter the impacts, the Malaysian government carried out various directed policy measures known collectively as the bail-out policy. The present paper examines the success of the policy to reduce the financial constraints. The present paper uses panel estimation methods to analyze the relationship between firms’ investments and their cash flows. The sample of study is split into two subsamples, consisting of the periods before and after the financial crisis, respectively. The success of the policy is measured based upon the easing of financial constraints faced by Malaysian firms. Using annual financial data, consisting of unbalanced panel from the period of 1988 to 2005, the results found favour the bail-out policy. This finding indicates the success of the bail-out policy to reduce the severity of financial constraints.