We look at the impact of intermediated funding provided by the European Investment Bank (EIB) on the performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the 28 member countries of the European Union between 2008 and 2014. We use a combination of propensity score matching and...

This report discusses the activity of credit guarantee schemes (CGSs) in Western Europe and presents an analysis based on a novel survey, conducted by the European Investment Bank (EIB) Group , among 18 credit guarantee organisations in 13 countries and 33 banks operating in 17 countries. The...

Does IFI funding provide support to SMEs receiving such funding? We assess the impact of funding by the European Investment Bank (EIB) on the performance of 5,223 SMEs in eight countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) during 2008-2014. Our results, derived from propensity score matching and...

Using a representative sample of European firms, this paper studies whether and to what extent financing constraints affect employers' decisions to invest in employee training. It combines survey data on investment activities with administrative data on financial statements to develop an index...

This paper focuses on the growth and convergence of Central, Eastern and South-Eastern European EU countries (CESEE). We argue that the factors behind the pre-crisis growth model of the region - skilled yet affordable labour force, foreign direct investment, imports of productivity-enhancing...

We examine the relationship between capital structure and carbon intensity in manufacturing firms using a novel dataset that combines information from the EU Emission Trading System with firm-level financial accounts. Our findings indicate that higher financial leverage is associated with lower...

Using a pan-European data set of 8.5 million firms, this paper finds that firms with high debt overhang invest relatively more than otherwise similar firms if they are operating in sectors facing good global growth opportunities. At the same time, the positive impact of a marginal increase in...

We estimate heterogeneous treatment effects of the EIB financial support on European firms between 2008 and 2015. The relevant control groups are created with propensity score matching and the effects are estimated in a difference-in-differences framework, controlling for firm-level and...

We develop a sovereign default risk index using natural language processing techniques and 10 million news articles covering over 100 countries. The index is a highfrequency measure of countries' default risk, particularly for those lacking marketbased measures: it correlates with sovereign CDS...

Capitalising on the productivity decomposition proposed by Olley and Pakes (1996), we analyse the role of financial factors behind the relatively muted post-crisis rebound in productivity compared to previous upturns in Europe. Firstly, we provide an OLS-consistent framework to decompose...