We study how firms' individual credit market experience influences their beliefs about the bank lending policy, using the Austrian Business Survey between 2011 and 2016. Firms which have recently experienced a loan rejection are more likely to believe that the lending policy is restrictive. We...

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

In the current recession, politicians grant state aid of yet unknown dimensions. But whatis the most efficient measure for granting such aid? We use a theoretical model withfirms that differ in their creditworthiness and compare different types of direct subsidieswith indirectly subsidized...

During the financial crisis asymmetric information in credit markets became moresevere. Did relationship banking help firms to avoid impaired credit financing andwhich credit financing problems did relationship banking help to circumvent? We usesurvey data for 1,139 German firms to analyze how...

Empirical evidence that migrants send home more remittances after disasters raises the question of whether remittances are used to self-insure, substituting for both formal and informal insurance. We investigate this question using a unique dataset on the usage patterns of financial services by...

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 receives a payoff if a firm is liquidated. Second, it loses the...

In transition and developing countries, we observe rather high levels of corruption even if they have democratic political systems. This is surprising from a political economy perspective, as the majority of people generally suffers from high corruption levels. Our model is based on the fact...

Business groups in emerging markets perform better than unaffiliated firms. One explanation is that business groups substitute some functions of missing institutions, for example, enforcing contracts. We investigate this by setting up a model where firms within the business group are connected...

Should the European Union grant state aid through an institution like the European Investment bank? This paper evaluates the efficiency of different measures for granting state aid. We use a theoretical model with firms that differ in their creditworthiness and compare different types of...