This paper studies the financing behaviour of SMEs across 11 euro area countries during the period 2010–2014. Using a firm-level and country representative survey, we construct time-varying country indicators of SMEs’ financing conditions accounting for composition and demand effects. We find a significant increase in the cross-country differences of the use of bank loans by SMEs. We decompose the variance of the time-varying country indicators to investigate two sources for this cross-country divergence: (i) an increase in the variance of shocks faced by the euro area, reflecting uncertainty; and (ii) heterogeneous deterministic paths, reflecting country-specific evolutions of factors such as financing costs, economic conditions or the banking environment. We find that the second mechanism is prominent: the cross-country divergence is mainly driven by a sharp increase (resp. decrease) in bank funding in countries where the use of bank loans by SMEs was originally high (resp. low). Additional results suggest that the increasing bank concentration, the reduction in the number of local branches and the decrease in the deposit-to-asset ratio explain the cross-country divergence regarding SMEs’ access to bank loans.

中文翻译：

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金融和主权债务危机后中小企业融资：欧元区国家比较

本文研究了 2010-2014 年期间 11 个欧元区国家中小企业的融资行为。通过企业层面和国家代表性调查，我们构建了中小企业融资状况的时变国家指标，考虑了构成和需求影响。我们发现中小企业使用银行贷款的跨国差异显着增加。我们分解时变国家指标的方差，以调查这种跨国差异的两个来源：（i）欧元区面临的冲击方差增加，反映了不确定性； (ii) 异质的确定性路径，反映了融资成本、经济状况或银行环境等因素的具体国家演变。我们发现第二个机制很突出：跨国差异主要是由中小企业银行贷款使用原本较高（或较低）的国家的银行融资急剧增加（或减少）所驱动。其他结果表明，银行集中度的增加、地方分支机构数量的减少以及存款与资产比率的下降解释了中小企业获得银行贷款的跨国差异。