This paper examines how bank competition affects the amount of credit provided to small businesses using both the loan turndown rate and the size of granted loans and L/Cs. Using 2003 National Survey of Small Business Finance data, we show that commercial banking in concentrated banking markets...

The role of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the fight against unemployment and economic activity stimulation is well established. Until today and due to lack of funding, Cameroon suffers of an unsustainable private sector constituted by SMEs at more than 90%; A situation which tends to...

The Icelandic Competition Council recently ruled that a cement supplier with 75% market share is not dominant. The ruling was based on countervailing power of local concrete producers. To test the economic arguments for the ruling, we present a simplified bilateral oligopoly model of the...

We assess the effects from the industrial policy of growing state-controlled national champions on the Russian banking system, its concentration and competitiveness. Some light is shed on comparative financial performance of state-controlled banks versus other market participants. We also show...

The purpose of the study was to identify factors which influence bank-firm relationships in Poland, herein identified with relationship banking. The results of empirical analysis have demonstrated that Polish firms readily establish single-bank relationships. The results of the econometric...

Competition intensification has deeply changed firms’ debt structure by increasing the number of banks from which they borrow at the same time. This paper is a literature review on small businesses banking pool. We examine three questions: What are the characteristics of the pool’s main...

We evaluate the impact of SME’s banking relationships configuration on the share of bank credit in their total debt. Crossing information from the DIANE and Kompass Europe databases, we select a sample of SMEs for which we can identify the different banks that they working with. We then test...

The increased diversification of fund rising methods among small and medium-sized businesses has been a major policy challenge in recent years, and private financial institutions are proactively striving to disseminate new financial technologies. However, this does not necessarily mean that...

Since 2003, the Financial Services Agency has set relationship banking enhancement program as an important strategic task to improve the functions of regional financial institutions. In this enhancement program, the FSA recommended that regional financial institutions introduce new financial...

The question of whether more competition among banks increases relationship banking, which is predicted to improve credit availability for informationally opaque firms in theory, is a controversial issue in the banking literature. By using firm-level survey data in Japan, this paper provides...