This paper analyzes firms' difficulties in accessing credit before and during the crisis, by focusing on two of their characteristics: financial fragility and growth prospects. Our econometric analysis indicates that fragile financial conditions were associated with a much higher than average...

We assess the impact of credit constraints on investment, inventories and other working capital and firm growth with a large panel of small and medium-sized enterprises from 12 European countries for the period 2014-2016. The data come from the Survey on the access to finance of enterprises...