SMEs, banks and the spatial differentiation of access to finance

Tianshu Zhao and Dylan Jones-Evans

Journal of Economic Geography, 2017, vol. 17, issue 4, 791-824

Abstract: By utilizing the SME Finance Monitor and a unique dataset on the geographical location of all bank branches in 11 UK economic regions, this paper examines the relevance of spatial differentiation on SMEs’ access to bank finance during the period of economic weakness following the 2007 financial crisis. We find evidence suggesting the presence of a regional-specific effect on SMEs’ access to bank finance. Our findings show that greater functional distance between bank headquarters and branches exacerbates the credit constraints faced by local SMEs although the impact of a smaller operational distance between branches and local SMEs is inconclusive, ceteris paribus. Our finding holds over a battery of robustness tests.

Keywords: Financial crisis; credit supply; small business financing; bank organization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G21 G29 G32 L14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jeg/lbw029 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:jecgeo:v:17:y:2017:i:4:p:791-824.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Geography is currently edited by Jorge De la Roca, Stephen Gibbons, Simona Iammarino, Amanda Ross and James Faulconbridge

More articles in Journal of Economic Geography from Oxford University Press Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().