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...

This paper conducts an empirical investigation of the finance-growth nexus at firm level. We exploit a large panel of Italian manufacturing firms observed over the period 1998-2003 to jointly assess the impact of cash flow and leverage on corporate growth measured in terms of employees and...

Prior literature shows that firms are less likely to pay dividends to preserve financial flexibility when facing greater competitive threats from rival firms in product markets. However, the real effects of dividend policy on product market outcomes are not widely understood. This paper...

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...

The goal of this study is to identify empirically how country-level development, taking into account the financial and macroeconomic environment, affect the risk profiles of the banking sector in Europe. Through a dataset that covers 3,399 European banks spanning the period 1996-2011, and the...

Purpose: Corporate governance in essence is designed to lead to economic growth. Nevertheless, despite placing great emphasis on promoting corporate governance practices over the years, countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have so far achieved insignificant or no economic growth. This, however,...