Local banking development and SME conservative financing policy. Does bank branch density matter?
研究葡萄牙中小企业数据，发现银行网点密度越高，企业越可能避免使用债务，但合作银行网点密度反而降低这种可能性，且该效应在长期债务中更显著。
Abstract Does bank branch density matter for the conservative financing puzzle? This paper looks at the importance of nearby physical banking services to the decision to eschew debt among SMEs. Our multivariate logistic models rely on recent information from Portugal, a small open bank-based European economy, and control for firm-level and municipality-level effects. We show that banks' branch density at the municipality level increases the odds of local SMEs following a conservative financing policy. However, the weight of local cooperative bank branches relates negatively to the odds of not using debt. Several robustness checks concerning sampling procedures, estimation methods, and variables’ definitions corroborate our baseline results. Moreover, our results show that the effect of bank branches on the decision to eschew debt is economically more relevant for the long-term than the short-term debt.