In light of the recent financial and economic crisis the present paper analyzes the determinants of loan default. We employ a unique firm-level panel data of 700 bank loans given to small and medium sized enterprises in Slovakia between 2000 and 2005 to investigate three loan default hypothesis....

We use loan-level data to study how the organizational structure of banks impacts small business lending. We find that decentralized banks ― where branch managers have greater autonomy over lending decisions ― give larger loans to small firms and those with “soft information”. However,...

In this paper, we find that reduced credit supply reduces firm investments in our sample of small private firms. The effect is strongest for the least financially constrained firms. We use a representative survey of identified Norwegian firms that is linked with financial, bank account and...

This paper investigates two aspects of the demand side determinants of bank lending for a sample of Australian SMEs. Using data from the Growing Australian Business Survey we document the results on why a sample of Australian SMEs seek bank finance and bank credit rationing of loan applications....