This paper examines the extent to which bank market power alleviates or magnifies SME credit constraints using a large panel dataset of more than 118,000 SMEs across 20 European countries over the period 2005-2008. To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine bank market power and SME...

Financing for working capital and investment is essential for the survival and growth of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). The recent financial crisis has provoked much debate in Ireland and Europe around the provision of bank financing to SMEs. This article provides empirical evidence, using...

Using a large panel data set on the population of UK mortgage loans by Irish-headquartered banks, this paper presents a transitions-based model of mortgage default. The estimation departs from cross-sectional methods typically used in mortgage default models, in that the transition both into and...

The detrimental impacts of credit booms, property booms and firm over-leverage are well-established in a growing literature highlighting their effects on household consump- tion, firm investment and economic growth. The link between credit-fuelled property market booms and firms' ability to...

While much is known of the magnitude and performance of SME debt in Ireland, up to this point no measure of SME indebtedness has been available for a representative sample of the population. Survey data on the ratio of Debt to Turnover (DT) for Irish SMEs in 2012 and 2013 are presented here,...

An overhang relating to the pre-crisis property investment of Irish Small and Medium Enterprises has been identified as a potential drag on a recovery in employment, investment and output. This Letter aims to provide information from survey and loan-level data which can help to quantify the...

This paper analyses the effects of the recent euro area economic, financial and debt crisis on SMEs’ access to bank finance. We use a survey on access to finance of SMEs in the euro area carried out by the European Central Bank during 2009 and 2010 to examine the impact of macroeconomic...

The Prudential Capital Assessment Review (PCAR) 2011 uncovered significant potential losses in the Irish banking sector, leading to a considerable recapitalisation. This letter uses a large sample of the loan level data provided for PCAR 2011 to present descriptive statistics on the SME lending...

This paper presents a framework for estimating losses for residential mortgage loans.At the core is a transitions-based probability of default model which yields directly observ- able cash-fl ows at the loan level. The estimated model includes coefficients on unemployment, Loan to Value ratio...

This Letter provides an overview of the Central Bank of Ireland's Loan Loss Forecasting framework. This framework, which utilises detailed loan-level data provided on a six-monthly basis by domestic Irish banks, includes internally- developed probability of default (PD) models and a cash ow...