We hypothesize that informal bank networks influence corporate credit access in China. Our sample comprises a panel of 515 corporations listed on China's stock exchanges with a total of 1,052 firm-year observations, holding a total of 7,009 major bank loans from 183 distinct banks between 2007 and 2012. Results support the hypothesis that closure in bank networks facilitates credit access. We further show that the positive closure-performance association offers fewer advantages if financial markets and the legal infrastructure are relatively well developed. Our findings contribute to an emergent literature examining how informal networks can productively substitute weak formal institutions, and how the interplay between informal networks and network embeddedness shapes individual and corporate strategies.

Through the analysis of Argentina-World Bank (WB) relations between 1971 and 1976, this article examines how democracies and dictatorships, as well as political and economic constraints did (or did not) impact WB lending to Latin America. This period is especially revealing. Between May 1971 and September 1976, the WB did not grant any new loans to Argentina, thereby generating an exceptional and unusually long break in WB lending to the country. Drawing on previously undisclosed files from the WB Archives and additional primary sources from Argentina and the United States, this article unveils the actual mechanisms, criteria and justification that stood behind the decision to lend or not to lend to Argentina. It maintains that the WB’s self-imposed principle of «neutrality» played a crucial role in facilitating the WB’s relations with Argentina during the politically and economically unstable early 1970s.