 Financing constraints and firm characteristics evidence from Greek SMEsEconomic Bulletin, 2018, issue 48, 7-27 Abstract: The paper analyses financing constraints faced by Greek SMEs in 2014-2017, exploiting the micro dataset of Greek SMEs provided by the Survey on the Access to Finance of Enterprises in the euro area (SAFE). More specifically, at the firm level, we examine whether certain characteristics of Greek firms such as firm size, age, exporting activity or performance were related to their access to bank credit and trade credit, while also examining complementarily the impact of the overall conditions in the economy and the banking sector. Overall, we find that firm size and performance were important limiting factors in firms’ access to credit, while exporting companies have been more active in requesting financing. In addition, when borrowers’ discouragement is taken into account, highly exporting firms and, in the case of bank financing, relatively younger firms too seem to be overall less likely to report constraints. Our evidence also corroborates the importance of domestic macroeconomic conditions and bank balance sheet strength for the severity of constraints encountered by SMEs. Keywords: Financing constraints; bank credit; trade credit; small and medium-sized enterprises (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bog:econbl:y:2018:i:48:p:7 Access Statistics for this article Economic Bulletin is currently edited by Dimitris Malliaropulos More articles in Economic Bulletin from Bank of Greece Contact information at EDIRC. |
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