A beacon in the night: Government certification of SMEs towards banks

Policymakers around the world have created several schemes to support financially-constrained SMEs. However, whether these mechanisms improve the access to external sources of finance or on the contrary crowd out private players remains a relevant question. In this paper we study the effectiveness o...

ver descrição completa

Detalhes bibliográficos
Autores: Martí Pellón, José Pedro, Croce, Annalisa
Formato: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2017
País:España
Recursos:Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM)
Repositorio:Docta Complutense
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:docta.ucm.es:20.500.14352/91665
Acesso em linha:https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/91665
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palavra-chave:336.7
G21
G28
H81
Certification hypothesis
Participative loans
Long-term financing
Government intervention
Subsidized loans
Empresas
Finanzas
Economía pública
5307.04 Estudios del desarrollo Económico
Descrição
Resumo:Policymakers around the world have created several schemes to support financially-constrained SMEs. However, whether these mechanisms improve the access to external sources of finance or on the contrary crowd out private players remains a relevant question. In this paper we study the effectiveness of a recent form of government support, called participative loan, in improving recipient SMEs’ access to external financial debt. Relying on the literature about the certification effect, we develop hypotheses on the conditions under which the improvement is stronger. The empirical analysis is based on a sample of 488 Spanish SMEs that received participative loans from a Spanish government agency and a control group of 719 matched twins. We show that the former register significantly higher external financial debt (+31.5%). The effect is stronger for smaller firms, or for those operating in high-technology sectors, which suffer more acutely from information asymmetries, and negligible for firms that already received support from another government-supported institution. After ruling out alternative explanations, we interpret this result as a positive evidence of government certification of SMEs towards banks.