Access to external finance is a key challenge for the creation, survival and growth of SMEs. This article delves into the “weak funding” handicap of rural small firms (SEs): the access to bank financing and the substitutive role of trade credit for entrepreneurs in rural areas when they...

We show that banks "extended-and-pretended" their impaired CRE mortgages in the post-pandemic period to avoid writing off their capital, leading to credit misallocation and a buildup of financial fragility. We detect this behavior using loan-level supervisory data on maturity extensions, bank...

Government provision of a financial safety net for financial institutions has been a key element of the policy response to the current crisis, with governments extending existing guarantees and introducing new ones. These measures have been helpful in avoiding a further accelerated loss of...