Financial markets in emerging economies are often perceived as more risky than those in developed countries. We investigate whether this is true for loans to SMEs using a unique unbalanced panel of nearly 700 loans made to SMEs in Slovakia between 2000 and 2005. Several probit and panel probit...

Bank regulation differs across countries. We show that these differences provide incentives to lend across the border. In a theoretical model we derive the foreign bank's credit supply function, showing that in the case of regulatory differences the closer firms are to the border the more likely...

The current economic policy discussion on financial integration in the European Union concentrates on cross-border mergers. We study the impact of cross-border lending in a theoretical model where banks acquire either hard or soft information on borrowing firms and predict that the closer firms...

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...

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....

Daten des ifo Kreditklimas, das zweimal jährlich im Rahmen des ifo Konjunkturtests erstellt wird, zeigen, dass deutsche KMUs in Gebieten nahe der österreichischen Grenze über einen besseren Zugang zu Krediten verfügen als andere Unternehmen. Ohne grenzüberschreitende Kredite wäre die Nähe...