Research on financial constraints of very small firms is scarce because it is difficult to observe and measure their transactions. Previous studies on small enterprises in post-communist countries have focused either on the effect of financing constraints on business growth (Budina et al., 2000,...

Microfinance institutions are important, particularly in developing countries, because they expand the frontier of financial intermediation by providing loans to those traditionally excluded from formal financial markets. This paper presents the first systematic statistical examination of the...