Seit 2003 werden die deutschen Unternehmen im Rahmen des ifo Konjunkturtests regelmäßig auch nach ihrer Beurteilung der Kreditvergabebereitschaft der Banken gefragt. Die Antworten auf diese »Kreditfrage« werden sowohl für die Bildung makroökonomischer Indikatoren – wie der...

Banks entering an emerging market face a lot of uncertainty about the risks involved in lending. We use a unique unbalanced panel of nearly 700 short-term loans made to SMEs in Slovakia between January 2000 and June 2005. Of the loans granted, on average 6.0 per cent of the firms defaulted....

The number of firm bankruptcies is surprisingly low in economies with poor institutions. We study a model of bank-firm relationship and show that the bank's decision to liquidate bad firms has two opposing effects. First, the bank gets a payoff if a firm is liquidated. Second, it loses the rent...

The current crisis raises the question whether loans to SMEs in emerging markets are inherently more risky. We use a unique unbalanced panel of nearly 700 loans made to SMEs in Slovakia between 2000 and 2005. Several probit and panel probit models show that liquidity and profitability factors...