Bank credit lending to small and medium enterprises: was there a credit crunch in Italy?

Abstract

The present paper investigates the existence of credit rationing in the Italian corporate bank loan market by estimating a demand-supply disequilibrium model for bank credit in the period 2007-2012. From this model, we derive the proportion of credit rationed companies using a panel data set of private Italian SMEs. The results of our study show that, over the period 2007-2012, private Italian SMEs were credit rationed, especially in the years 2007, 2008, 2011 and 2012.