We study the effect of financial distress in foreign parent banks on local SME financing in 14 central and eastern European countries during the early stages of the 2007-2008 financial crisis. We use survey data on applicant and non-applicant firms that enable us to disentangle effects driven by...

This paper provides the first empirical evidence that bank regulation is associated with cross-border spillover effects through the lending activities of large multinational banks. We analyze business lending by 155 banks to 9613 firms in 1976 different localities across 16 countries. We find...

We investigate the effect of sovereign stress and of unconventional monetary policy on small firms’ financing patterns during the euro area debt crisis. We find that after the crisis started, firms in stressed countries were more likely to be credit rationed, both in the quantity and in the...

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...

We investigate the impact of employment protection on firms' credit access by looking at both credit obtained from banks and firms' decision to apply for a loan. We find that greater flexibility in structuring the employees' working hours and in dismissing employees increases the probability...

We study the transmission of (unconventional) monetary policy to the real sector when firm decisions depend on both current and future credit market conditions. For a given level of current credit access, investment and employment increases more at firms expecting bank credit to improve in the...

More than 80% of US syndicated loans contain at least one fee type and contracts typically specify a menu of spread and different types of fees. We test the predictions of existing theories about the main purposes of fees and provide supporting evidence that: (1) fees are used to Price options...

We analyze differences in the pricing of syndicated loans between U.S. and European loans. For credit lines, U.S. borrowers pay significantly higher spreads, but also lower fees, resulting in similar total costs of borrowing in both markets. For term loans, U.S. firms pay significantly higher...

More than 80% of US syndicated loans contain at least one fee type and contracts typically specify a menu of spread and different types of fees. We test the predictions of existing theories about the main purposes of fees and provide supporting evidence that: (1) fees are used to price options...