We test under what circumstances boards discipline managers and whether such interventions improve performance. We exploit exogenous variation due to the staggered adoption of corporate governance laws in formerly Communist countries coupled with detailed ‘hard’ information about the...

This working paper presents the results of the 2020 EIF Private Equity Mid-Market Survey, an anonymised online survey of the private equity (PE) mid-market general partner/management companies. Complementing the 2018 EIF Venture Capital Survey paper (2018/51), which examined the venture capital...

The vast majority of firms in Europe are micro firms. Still, we know little about their financing patterns. Our paper aims to close this gap. Based on a large European firm-level data set, we find that micro firms differ in their financing patterns from small and medium-sized companies. Our...

This EIF Working Paper takes a holistic approach to investigate SME financing patterns in Europe by performing a cluster analysis including 12,726 SMEs in 28 European countries. The results reveal that SME financing in Europe is not homogenous but that different financing patterns exist. The...

The EIF VC Survey and the EIF Private Equity Mid-Market Survey (the largest combined regular survey exercises among General Partners on a pan-European level) provide an opportunity to retrieve unique market insights. This publication is based on the results of the 2022 waves of these two surveys...

In light of recent EU policy initiatives such as the Capital Markets Union (CMU) action plan, this working paper provides unique insights from Venture Capital (VC) general partners/management companies, Private Equity Mid-Market (PE MM) managers and Business Angels (BA). Specifically, based on...

This working paper provides an overview of the main markets relevant to the EIF, thereby documenting the impact of the current inflationary environment, the war in Ukraine and the aftermath of the pandemic on the SME financing environment. The publication first discusses the general market...

While many studies explain the correlation between firm-level productivity and export status entirely by better firms self-selecting into exporting, a few studies find evidence of reverse causation. Especially in developing or transition economies, exporters seem to improve performance after...