We study the effects of a unique lending program initiated by the Swedish government at the height of the financial crisis that allowed firms to suspend payment of all labor-related taxes and fees. Comprehensive administrative data on all Swedish firms show that firms borrowing from the program...

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...

In his book, 'Boulevard of Broken Dreams: Why Public Efforts to Boost Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Have Failed - and What to Do about It,' Harvard Business School Professor, Josh Lerner, explains that governments can only play a limited role in spurring innovation and entrepreneurship....

By analyzing a full dataset of 437 Italian equity crowdfunding campaigns over the period 2014-2020, and then by focusing on a sub-sample of 79 projects posted on the websites of platforms from January 2020 to June 2020, this chapter explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Italian...

We examine the evolution of several key firm economic and financial variables in the years surrounding and during the Great Recession using the Kauffman Firm Survey, a large panel of young firms founded in 2004 and surveyed for eight consecutive years. We find that these young firms experienced...

The 2008-09 global financial crisis had a profound impact on the availability of bank credit for SMEs. Although a decline in the demand for bank credit played an important role, banks have also become more reluctant to lend, including as a consequence of new capital requirements. Moreover, a...

When the credit crisis started in 2008, a total of 67 entrepreneurs sought advice with the European Centre of Managerial Studies in Business Administration of the Spiru Haret University in Bucharest in order to find alternatives to finance classic loans that could enable them perform their...

We use the Federal Reserve's 2007, 2009 re-interview of 2007 respondents, and 2010 Surveys of Consumer Finances (SCFs) to study how small businesses owned and actively managed by households fared during those turbulent years. Even though the surveys contain extensive data on a broad...

Mounting evidence indicates that firms, particularly SMEs, suffered from a significant credit crunch during this crisis. Little research exists on how SMEs coped with this problem due to a lack of data in the U.S. and elsewhere. We analyse for the first time whether trade credit provided an...

I show that disruptions to personal sources of financing, aside from commercial lending supply shocks, impair the survival and growth of small businesses. Entrepreneurs holding deposit accounts at retail banking institutions that defaulted following the financial crisis reduce personal borrowing...