October 2000 - Financial liberalization reduces imperfections in financial markets by reducing the agency costs of financial leverage. Small firms gain most from liberalization, because the favoritism of preferential credit directed to large firms tends to disappear under liberalization. Laeven...

Using credit-registry data for Spain and Peru, we document that four main types of commercial credit-asset-based loans, cash-flow loans, trade finance and leasing-are easily identifiable and represent the bulk of corporate credit. We show that credit dynamics and bank lending channels vary...

We quantify the role of financial factors behind the sluggish post-crisis performance of European firms. We use a firm-bank-sovereign matched database to identify separate roles for firm and bank balance sheet weaknesses arising from changes in sovereign risk and aggregate demand conditions. We...