Relations bancaires et crédits aux PME

We evaluate the impact of SME’s banking relationships configuration on the share of bank credit in their total debt. Crossing information from the DIANE and Kompass Europe databases, we select a sample of SMEs for which we can identify the different banks that they working with. We then test the effects of the number of banks an SME works with as well as that of its main bank’s organizational structure on the bank debt over total debt ratio. We find evidence that the more important this number is, the more important the ratio. We also report that SMEs working with a decentralized main bank present on average a higher ratio. Finally, studying the interaction term of the number of banks and the main bank’s organizational structure, we show that the ratio’s increase with the firm’s number of banks is less important for those engaged with a decentralized main bank than for those engaged with a centralized one.