Cash holdings at the onset of a financial crisis are a key determinant of investment by SMEs not only during the crisis … persistent and growing investment gap. The amplification effect was present for SMEs with both volatile and stable cash holdings …

In this paper, we use firm-level survey data to explore the determinants of SME investment activity and the extent to … which observed investment is in line with that suggested by economic fundamentals. In contrast to previous literature which … has focused on whether investment gaps exist at a more aggregate level, we find evidence that for SMEs actual investment …

financial crisis on financing and investment behaviours of SMEs, which remains scarce in the existing studies. The results find … that there is a reduction in SMEs' investment caused by the crisis period. In addition, following the onset of the economic … crisis, the internally generated finance is more influential on SMEs' investment than the supply of bank finance, supporting …