This article tests the hypothesis that financial supply-side shifts help to explain the low-investment climate of private firms in Germany. The core contention is that a firm's financial position contributes to its access to external finance on credit markets. Special emphasis is put on small...

Using a novel way to identify relationship and transaction banks, we study how banks' lending techniques affect funding to SMEs over the business cycle. For 21 countries we link the lending techniques that banks use in the direct vicinity of firms to these firms' credit constraints at two...

Using comprehensive data on bank lending and establishment-level outcomes from 1997-2011, this paper fails to find evidence in favor of the hypothesis that the small business lending channel is an important determinant of small business or overall economic activity. The shift-share style...