The precarious employment situation in the EU has given rise to public policies that aim at giving small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) better access to finance. SMEs may face difficulties due to information problems and other inefficiencies in loan markets. However, the European evidence...

The precarious employment situation in the EU has given rise to public policies that aim at giving small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) better access to finance. SMEs may face difficulties due to information problems and other inefficiencies in loan markets. However, the European evidence...

This paper presents and analyses the results of a survey of some 400 credit institutions in the European Union carried out by the European Investment Bank in the summer of 2003. An indepth analysis of the survey responses of 74 participating banks leads to the following conclusions: (1) despite...

We extend the paper of Hinloopen and van Marrewijk (2005), who introduce the harmonic mass index to test whether two samples come from the same distribution, in the following directions. Firstly, we derive the Harmonic Weighted Mass (HWM) index for any number of samples. Secondly, this paper...

We measure the total-risk-adjusted (as opposed to factor-risk-adjusted) performance of hedge fund indices in well-diversified portfolios. Alpha is defined as the difference between, on the one hand, the average return on a mean-variance efficient portfolio containing exclusively traditional...

Introducing the topic of SME finance and summarising the main findings of the contributions to this edition of the EIB Papers, this overview stresses the importance of relationship banking for the supply of SME credit; points out the differences and similarities in the capital structure of firms...

This paper examines whether small and mediumsized enterprises (SMEs) in Europe suffer from a structural financing problem that hinders their growth. To this end, we estimate growth-cashflow sensitivities for firms in different size classes. Our results show that the sensitivity of company growth...

The European Investment Bank (EIB) differs from most other international financial institutions (IFIs) in that it lends in all of its member countries, not only in its poorer members. It does lend throughout the world, but most of its lending is within the European Union (EU). A significant...