This paper examines the extent to which bank market power alleviates or magnifies SME credit constraints using a large panel dataset of more than 118,000 SMEs across 20 European countries over the period 2005-2008. To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine bank market power and SME...

The post-2008 period in the euro area was characterised by sharp dispersion in borrowing costs faced by firms, across both countries and firm types. This dispersion was an important manifestation of the financial fragmentation" which hampered the smooth transmission of accommodative monetary...