Using a new survey, we show that the dispersion of marginal products across firms in the European Union is about twice as large as that in the United States. Reducing it to the US level would increase EU GDP by more than 30 percent. Alternatively, removing barriers between industries and...

Using large scale EIB Investment Survey evidence for 2016 covering 8,900 non-financial firms from all size and age classes across all sectors and all EU Member States, we identify different innovation profiles based on a firm's R&D investment and/or innovation activities. We find that "basic"...

Using panel data on Egyptian firms to explore cyclical and structural determinants of access to finance, we find that firms with more educated and more experienced managers are more likely to open a checking account, often a prerequisite for obtaining credit. Firms that started operating in the...

This paper assesses the role of energy audits in promoting energy-efficiency measures in SMEs. It benefits from the data collected within the European Investment Bank Surveys in 2017 and 2018, involving information about energy audits and energy-efficiency investments of some 12,500 signatures...

We use the 2021 vintage of the EIB Investment Survey (EIBIS) which contains a detailed set of questions regarding the nature of the policy support to firms during the COVID-19 crisis. Matched with hard data on the balance sheets and Profit and Loss (P&L) statements of corporations, the survey...

Infrastructure investment in Europe has been adversely affected by the economic crisis, undermining both the immediate recovery and longer-term growth potential. This paper discusses recent trends before focusing on how transport infrastructure - arguably the hardest hit sector during the crisis...