Getting money in the country: Is there a liability of rurality facing SMEs?
研究了英国农村与城市中小企业贷款利率差异，发现农村企业平均贷款利率更低，但贷款规模更小且较少提供抵押品，建议区域发展基金扩大农村覆盖。
This paper examines the loan interest rates offered in rural versus urban locations to test whether a “liability of rurality” confronts rural SMEs. Using a fine grained rural-urban spatial classification system we test whether small firms located across the NUTS 3 areas of England face a rural interest rate “price penalty”. On average rural SMEs take out smaller loans and are less inclined to offer collateral than urban counterparts. Counterintuitively, our key finding is that rural firms benefit from lower average loan interest rates. Regional development funds need to extend their spatial horizons to address their lack of rural outreach.