In the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, there has been an increased interest in the role of small and medium enterprises in job creation and economic growth. However the lack of consistent indicators at the country level restricts extensive cross-country analyses of lending...

Combining two unique data sets, this paper explores the relationship between the relative importance of different financial institutions and their average size and firms' access to financial services. Specifically, the authors explore the relationship between the share in total financial assets...

Firm surveys often indicate that firms complain a lot about lack of access to financial services, but financing constraints are difficult to identify, given demand and supply considerations and with only surveys based on firms' perceptions. Specifically, it is difficult to separate demand for...

Using a unique firm level data set-the Enterprise Surveys-this paper develops a new measure of credit-constrained status for firms using hard data instead of perceptions data. The paper classifies firms into four ordinal categories: Not Credit Constrained, Maybe Credit Constrained, Partially...

Many firms in the developing world-including a majority of micro, small, and medium enterprises-operate in the informal economy. The informal firms face a variety of constraints, making it harder for them to do business and grow. Lack of access to finance is often cited as the biggest...

This paper uses cross-country firm-level surveys to gauge access to financial services and the importance of financing constraints for African enterprises. The paper compares access to finance in Africa and other developing regions of the world, within Africa across countries, and across...