This paper presents the main findings of the Survey for bank financing to small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The key objective was to capture the main features of the "supply side" of SMEs financing in the Republic of North Macedonia and to identify institutional and policy constraints of...

We study the effects of the reform of the system of severance payments (TFR) of Italian employees on the cost and the access to credit for small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs). The most direct consequence of the reform is to reduce in the long run the amount of liquid assets available to...

Since small businesses typically rely on small banks as their primary source of financing, there are concerns that the wave of bank consolidation of the 1990s may have reduced the availability of loans to small businesses in the US. Using a panel of state-level banking information over...

Has information technology improved small businesses' credit access by hardening the information used in loan underwriting and reducing the importance of lender proximity? Previous research, pointing to increasing average lending distances, suggests that it has. Using over 20 years of Community...

We study the effects of diversifying funding sources on the financing conditions for firms. We exploit a regulatory reform that took place in Italy in 2012, i.e. the introduction of ‘minibonds’, which opened a new market-based funding opportunity for unlisted firms. Using the Italian Credit...

When designing schemes to help SMEs survive crises, the government typically faces asymmetric information, so that it cannot target the SMEs most worth saving. We show that the government can exploit the information in the borrower loan demand to improve policy targets compared with existing...

When designing schemes to help SMEs survive crises, the government typically faces asymmetric information, so that it cannot target the SMEs most worth saving. We show that the government can exploit the information in the borrower loan demand to improve policy targets compared with existing...

Does a diversification of funding sources affect the financing conditions for firms? To answer this question we study a regulatory reform which allowed unlisted firms to issue minibonds. Using the Italian Credit Register, we compare new loans granted to issuer firms with new loans concurrently...