A vast literature has emphasized that small banks are at a comparative advantage in small business lending. In this paper, we show that apart from size, which is negatively correlated with bank specialization in small business lending, organizational characteristics affect bank loan portfolio...

The survey research design was adopted, and the study was specifically designed to evaluate the challenges of bank-credit among SMEs in Nigeria and make recommendations. The questionnaire and indent interview methods were used to generate data. Data generated were coded and analyzed through...

This paper empirically investigates the role played by relatively small banks in the Japanese local credit market. We test the hypothesis that small banks enhance the recovery rate from the financial distress and reduce the bankruptcy ratio of small firms. Empirical evidence suggests that small...

Using a unique dataset based on the Bank of Italy's organizational survey, we find that – after having controlled for bank size – loan officers' authority has a key role in explaining bank specialization in small business lending. In particular, banks that delegate more decision-making power...

We model how an information asymmetry between the lending bank and the applying firm about the currency structure of firm revenues may affect loan currency choice. Our framework features a trade-off between the lower cost of foreign currency debt and the costs of currency induced loan default....

Based on a unique hand-collected database of 389 loans obtained from a French social bank dealing with small businesses, this paper compares two predictive models of future default events: the first relies on soft information (SI model), the second on hard information (HI model). The results...

Using data at the bank‐firm level for a large sample of small firms collected through the 8th UniCredit Survey conducted in 2011, we investigate the extent to which banks of different size reward more innovative firms, in terms of both access to lending and volume of credit granted. First we...

Has information technology improved small businesses' credit access by hardening the information used in loan underwriting and reducing the importance of lender proximity? Previous research, pointing to increasing average lending distances, suggests that it has. Using over 20 years of Community...