We investigate the effect of sovereign stress and of unconventional monetary policy on small firms' financing patterns during the euro area debt crisis. We find that after the crisis started, firms in stressed countries were more likely to be credit rationed, both in the quantity and in the...

This paper aims at investigating the relationship between firms' profit efficiency, access to finance and innovation activities. We enrich our understanding on firms' performance by adopting the stochastic frontier approach (SFA), which allows us to estimate profit functions and to obtain...

The post-2008 period in the euro area was characterised by sharp dispersion in borrowing costs faced by firms, across both countries and firm types. This dispersion was an important manifestation of the "financial fragmentation" which hampered the smooth transmission of accommodative monetary...

This paper uses a non-parametric matching procedure to match survey replies to balance sheet information. It draws on the SAFE survey on access to finance for a sample of 11886 firms in the euro area which are matched with their nearest neighbor in an extended dataset with balance sheet...

We study the effects of the diversification of funding sources on the financing conditions for firms. We exploit a regulatory reform which took place in Italy in 2012, i.e., the introduction of “minibonds”, which opened a new market-based funding opportunity for unlisted firms. Using the...

We present a DSGE model where firms optimally choose among alternative instruments of external finance. The model is used to explain the evolving composition of corporate debt during the financial crisis of 2008-09, namely the observed shift from bank finance to bond finance, at a time when the...

We show that FinTech lending affects credit markets and real economic activity using a unique data set of a Peer-to-Business platform for which we have the universe of loan applications. We find that FinTech serves high quality and creditworthy small businesses who already have access to bank...

This paper uses a unique dataset where credit rejections experienced by euro area firms are matched with firm and bank characteristics. This allows us to study simultaneously the role that bank and firm weakness had in the credit reduction observed in the euro area during the sovereign debt...

We quantify the role of financial factors behind the sluggish post-crisis performance of European firms. We use a firm-bank-sovereign matched database to identify separate roles for firm and bank balance sheet weaknesses arising from changes in sovereign risk and aggregate demand conditions. We...

This paper uses a new survey-based data set and a model with strong theoretical under-pinnings to explain the characteristics and behaviour of discouraged borrowers in the euro area. The results show that more borrowers are discouraged when the average interest rate charged by banks in a country...