SME investment opportunities depend on the level of financing constraints that firms face. Earlier research has mainly focused on the controversial argument that cash flow-investment correlations increase with the level of these constraints. We focus on bank loans rather than cash flow. Our...

Mounting evidence indicates that firms, particularly SMEs, suffered from a significant credit crunch during this crisis. Little research exists on how SMEs coped with this problem due to a lack of data in the U.S. and elsewhere. We analyse for the first time whether trade credit provided an...

Previous research suggests that loan officers may play a critical role in relationship lending by producing soft information about SMEs. For the first time, we analyze this hypothesis and find empirical evidence that indicates that loan officer activities are associated with bank production of...

The current literature on SME loan underwriting assumes that banks use just one of two lending technologies: relationship lending for opaque SMEs and transactions-based lending for relatively transparent SMEs. Recent work has departed from this view and hypothesizes that banks use a variety of...

Current theoretical and empirical research suggests that small banks have a comparative advantage in processing soft information and delivering relationship lending. The most comprehensive analysis of this view found using U.S. data that smaller SMEs borrow from smaller banks and smaller banks...

Current theoretical and empirical research suggests that small banks have a comparative advantage in processing soft information and delivering relationship lending. The most comprehensive analysis of this view found using U.S. data that smaller SMEs borrow from smaller banks and smaller banks...