The precarious employment situation in the EU has given rise to public policies that aim at giving small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) better access to finance. SMEs may face difficulties due to information problems and other inefficiencies in loan markets. However, the European evidence...

The European Investment Bank (EIB) differs from most other international financial institutions (IFIs) in that it lends in all of its member countries, not only in its poorer members. It does lend throughout the world, but most of its lending is within the European Union (EU). A significant...

Throughout the industrialised world the banking sector has embarked on a programme of restructuring and consolidation. In Japan the severity of the banking crisis has recently forced both the banking sector and the authorities to recognise deep-rooted problems and to take decisive action. In...

It is not so long ago that policy makers thought that excessive regional disparities would disappear automatically in the long run. Arbitrage possibilities arising from competition and factor mobility were expected to induce a more than average growth performance in lagging regions. Having the...

The late 1990s saw one of the most rapid diffusions of a new technology seen in history. Within the space of 5 years the number of Internet users reached 50 million. This compares with the 13 years required by TV to reach the same number of users in the 1950s and 1960s, and the 40 years that...

On the first of January 1993, the Second Banking Directive (1989) of the European Union and a number of the other EU Directives (1) related to the financial service industry were implemented. This heralded a new episode of deregulation, standardised minimum capital requirements and changes in...

Planned economies produced many goods and services - such as cars, electricity, and machinery - that did not differ fundamentally from those available in market economies. Certainly, the quality and variety of these goods and services did not reach Western standards and there was an almost...

This paper examines whether small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Europe suffer from a structural financing problem that hinders their growth. To this end, we estimate growth-cashflow sensitivities for firms in different size classes. Our results show that the sensitivity of company...