Large and foreign-owned institutions may have difficulty extending relationship loans to informationally opaque small firms. Bank distress does not appear to affect small business lending, although even small firms may react to bank distress by borrowing from multiple banks

This paper uses cross-country firm-level surveys to gauge access to financial services and the importance of financing constraints for African enterprises. The paper compares access to finance in Africa and other developing regions of the world, within Africa across countries, and across...