Several theoretical explanations for the presence of soft budget constraints have recently been put forward in the literature. The purpose of this paper is to empirically test these theories on the causes of soft budget constraints. We therefore use a panel data set, consisting of company...

Countries in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe (CESEE) experienced a credit boom-bust cycle in the last decade. This paper analyzes the roles of demand and supply factors in explaining this credit cycle. Our analysis first focuses on a large sample of bank-level data on credit growth for...