on bank credit and as they represent the vast majority of the corporate sector reduced credit availability for those …-sized enterprises (SME). We measure the financing opportunities of SMEs based on the bank debt/assets ratio and the logarithmized credit … size and control both explicitly for bank mergers and for the increase in the average bank size in the course of the …

. Business cycle effects, in particular lagged GDP growth, display a substantial procyclical impact on bank profits. These …