Credit from suppliers is an important source of finance for firms. It can sustain firms' financial flexibility even in periods of downturn. In this study, using a large database of 90,763 Italian firms in the 2015-2021 period, we investigated how local financial development affects the trade...

The financial crisis has brought to the fore concerns regarding small- and medium-sized enterprises' (SMEs) capacity to access traditional bank lending. Using European firm-level data on SME access to finance since the onset of the financial crisis, we find that bank-lending constrained SMEs are...

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...