Access to credit and its determinants: A comparison of survey-based measures

Hainz, Christa and Nabokin, Tatjana (2019): Access to credit and its determinants: A comparison of survey-based measures. In: Economics of Transition, Vol. 27, No. 4: pp. 1031-1067

Abstract

Measuring access to finance represents an important challenge in empirical studies. Due to data limitations, perception-based indicators or the usage of finance are often used as approximations of access to finance. However, these approximations disregard firm-specific differences in the demand for finance. We derive a direct measure of access to credit from firm-level survey data and explicitly model credit demand. We study the determinants of access to credit and disentangle, in contrast to other measures, their effects on demand for and access to credit. We find that the usage of credit is not a sufficient approximation, while perception-based indicators are surprisingly precise.

• Item Type: Journal article
• Faculties: Economics
• Subjects: 300 Social sciences > 330 Economics
• ISSN: 0967-0750
• Language: English