Bräuning, Falk; Fillat Comenge, José Luis; Wang, J. … - 2022 - This version: July 2022
leverage faced tighter constraints in accessing bank credit after the COVID-19 outbreak in spring 2020. Specifically, SMEs with … higher pre-COVID leverage obtained a smaller volume of new loans and had to pay a higher spread on them during the pandemic … were not able to substitute to other sources of debt financing and thus experienced more of a reduction in total debt as …