Using a sample of bank loans to firms operating in the Greek tourism sector, and regional variation of tourism activities to identify the strategic defaulted firms, we examine the impact of bank consolidation on the firms’ payment behavior. We show that a merger-induced impairment of the...

The study focuses on Greek non-financial firms listed on the Athens Exchange in the period 1998-2002 and shows that only a small fraction of these firms were in a position to finance their growth by exclusively using internal resources with the findings varying depending on the firms’ size....