The financing of small and medium-sized firms is important for the catching-up of the East German to the West German economy since reunification. We explore whether it is restricted by unfavorable bank loan terms, using bank-survey data on lending decisions to small and medium-sized firms. A...

While it is conventional wisdom that small and medium-sized firms tend to hold multiple banking relationships, evidence about the financial behavior of micro firms is scarce. The present paper focuses on professionals as a special group of microenterprises. It explains their characteristics and...

Switzerland is one of the countries with the highest concentration of bank-customer relationships. The present paper seeks to find out whether this can be explained by the structure of Swiss firms or by the organization of the Swiss banking market. Using survey data from small and medium-sized...

An overview of previous evidence about relationship banking to SMEs shows that multiple banking relationships prevail even at small firms, but there is hardly evidence on the number of banking relationships held by micro firms. To close this gap, we use data from a survey conducted among...

Der folgende Bericht fasst die Ergebnisse einer mündlichen Befragung von Freiberuflern in Rostock, Bad Doberan und Güstrow zum Thema der Nutzung klassischer und elektronischer Vertriebswege von Bankdienstleistungen zusammen. Ziel war, Entscheidungen von kleinen Unternehmen

This paper investigates changes in the number of bank relationships of small and medium-sized enterprises in Switzerland from 1996 to 2002. It differentiates between overall bank relationships and lending relationships and disaggregates the loan market with respect to firm sizes, industries and...