Small and medium-sized enterprises are a centrepiece of Europe?s economy. Due to their limited size and their generally lower creditworthiness, their access to financial market instruments is more limited than for large enterprises, which benefit from more elaborate Treasury operations,...

The allocation of authority affects the communication of information about clients within banks. We document that in small business lending internal control leads loan officers to propose inflated credit ratings for their clients. Inflated ratings are, however, anticipated and partly reversed by...