After the global financial crisis and during the European sovereign debt crisis, bank lending to companies in the euro area slowed down dramatically, bringing the economy close to a credit crunch. It was only after the start of the European Central Bank (ECB) quantitative easing programme in...

Small businesses (SMEs) depend on banks for credit. We show that the severity of the Eurozone crisis was worse in countries where firms borrowed more from domestic banks ("domestic bank dependence") than in countries where firms borrowed more from international banks. Eurozone banking...

The post-2008 period in the euro area was characterised by sharp dispersion in borrowing costs faced by firms, across both countries and firm types. This dispersion was an important manifestation of the financial fragmentation" which hampered the smooth transmission of accommodative monetary...