Prior studies have shown that newly public firms exhibit a high degree of uncertainty and asymmetric information, with few reliable sources of information. These findings suggest that investors could benefit if some independent party is able to assess the quality of a newly public firm. Since...

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) stimulate domestic demand through job creation, innovation, and competition; thus, they can be a driving force behind a resilient national economy. In addition, SMEs involved in global production supply chains have the potential to encourage international...

Previous research on relationship lending has paid very little attention to the role of trust. Trust might be ex-pected to reduce agency costs, perceived credit risk and thus the request for personal collateral. Trustworthiness is associated with three attributes of SME owner/managers’:...

We use loan-level data to study how the organizational structure of banks impacts small business lending. We find that decentralized banks ― where branch managers have greater autonomy over lending decisions ― give larger loans to small firms and those with “soft information”. However,...

The survey research design was adopted, and the study was specifically designed to evaluate the challenges of bank-credit among SMEs in Nigeria and make recommendations. The questionnaire and indent interview methods were used to generate data. Data generated were coded and analyzed through...

We use data from the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys to test the importance of governance to the availability of credit. We model the credit-allocation process for SMEs in three steps. Based upon these steps, we classify small businesses into four groups based upon their credit needs – firms...

This paper examines the characteristics of financial institutions that provide financing to new firms using a unique firm-bank match-level dataset of more than 3,000 unlisted small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) incorporated in Japan. We employ a within-firm estimator that perfectly...

This study utilizes data from the Federal Reserve Board's Surveys of Small Business Finances (SSBFs) and from the Kauffman Foundation's Kauffman Firm Surveys (KFSs) to provide new evidence on how business credit scoring affects the availability of credit to female- and minority-owned firms. SSBF...

This paper compares the loans granted to male and female entrepreneurs by a French microfinance institution (MFI). The sample period is split in two: before and after the MFI implemented France's regulatory EUR 10,000 loan ceiling. In the first period, the MFI does not co-finance projects with...

This paper studies how bank market power affects firm creation in innovative industries. Theoretically, I show that the effect of bank market power is ambiguous. I exploit a 2012 policy intervention in Italy, designed to foster firm creation in innovative industries through public bank...