This paper provides an encompassing description of the various indicators compiled in the financial module of CompNet using balance sheet information of European firms. We investigate whether and to which extent the heterogeneous financial positions of firms have affected firms' investment...

This paper provides novel information on the propagation of the pandemic-induced real shock to firms' financial conditions. It uses firm-level survey data from end February to early April 2020 for a large sample of euro area SMEs and large firms. Firms' expectations on the availability of credit...

This paper aims at investigating the relationship between firms' profit efficiency, access to finance and innovation activities. We enrich our understanding on firms' performance by adopting the stochastic frontier approach (SFA), which allows us to estimate profit functions and to obtain...

We study the relation between firms financial structure, access to external finance and labor productivity using a unique dataset of firm-level data for several euro area countries during the period 1995-2011. The empirical strategy is twofold. First we build a synthetic indicator of financial...

We investigate the effect of sovereign stress and of unconventional monetary policy on small firms' financing patterns during the euro area debt crisis. We find that after the crisis started, firms in stressed countries were more likely to be credit rationed, both in the quantity and in the...

We use a large database of more than 685,000 European firms to show that financial flexibility attained through conservative leverage policies is more important for private, small, medium-sized and young firms and for firms in countries with lower access to credit and weaker investor protection....

This paper investigates the financing conditions of non-financial corporations in the euro area. We develop a new firm classification based on micro data by distinguishing between three groups of firms: unconstrained, relatively and absolutely constrained firms. We also provide further evidence...

Monetary policy aims at affecting corporate borrowing by influencing the marginal costs of firms, but its potency can be conditioned by the degree of market competition. We first identify conditions under which changes in marginal costs may have different effects on credit constraints and output...

In this study we investigate the determinants of financing obstacles using survey data on a sample of around 5000 firms from the euro area countries. This completely new survey – started at the end of 2009 - gives us the opportunity to test whether firm characteristics such as size, age,...

This paper uses a new survey-based data set and a model with strong theoretical under-pinnings to explain the characteristics and behaviour of discouraged borrowers in the euro area. The results show that more borrowers are discouraged when the average interest rate charged by banks in a country...