Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) account for a disproportionate share of output and employment in Europe but are still highly dependent on bank finance, which dried up or became prohibitively expensive during the crisis. Broader access to alternative, long-term finance through...

We investigate a banking system subject to repeated macroeconomic shocks and show that without deposit rate control, the banking system collapses with certainty. Any initial level of reserves will delay the collapse but not avoid it. Even without a banking collapse, the economy still converges...