IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedbwp/94908.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Did High Leverage Render Small Businesses Vulnerable to the COVID-19 Shock?

Author

Abstract

Using supervisory data on small and mid-sized nonfinancial enterprises (SMEs), we find that those SMEs with higher leverage faced tighter constraints in accessing bank credit after the COVID-19 outbreak in spring 2020. Specifically, SMEs with higher pre-COVID leverage obtained a smaller volume of new loans and had to pay a higher spread on them during the pandemic period. Consistent with an inward shift in loan supply, these effects were concentrated in loans originated by banks with below-median capital buffers. Highly levered SMEs that relied on low-capital large banks for funding before the pandemic were not able to substitute to other sources of debt financing and thus experienced more of a reduction in total debt as well as a decline in investment and employment. On the other hand, the unprecedented public support, especially the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), mitigated the adverse real effect stemming from bank credit constraints.

Suggested Citation

  • Falk Bräuning & José Fillat & J. Christina Wang, 2022. "Did High Leverage Render Small Businesses Vulnerable to the COVID-19 Shock?," Working Papers 22-13, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedbwp:94908
    DOI: 10.29412/res.wp.2022.13
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/research-department-working-paper/2022/did-high-leverage-render-small-businesses-vulnerable-to-the-covid-19-shock.aspx
    File Function: Summary
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.bostonfed.org/-/media/Documents/Workingpapers/PDF/2022/wp2213.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.29412/res.wp.2022.13?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rüdiger Fahlenbrach & Kevin Rageth & René M Stulz, 2021. "How Valuable Is Financial Flexibility when Revenue Stops? Evidence from the COVID-19 Crisis [The risk of being a fallen angel and the corporate dash for cash in the midst of COVID]," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 34(11), pages 5474-5521.
    2. Daniel Greenwald, 2019. "Firm Debt Covenants and the Macroeconomy: The Interest Coverage Channel," 2019 Meeting Papers 520, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    3. Mark Gertler & Simon Gilchrist, 1994. "Monetary Policy, Business Cycles, and the Behavior of Small Manufacturing Firms," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 109(2), pages 309-340.
    4. Michael Greenstone & Alexandre Mas & Hoai-Luu Nguyen, 2020. "Do Credit Market Shocks Affect the Real Economy? Quasi-experimental Evidence from the Great Recession and "Normal" Economic Times," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 12(1), pages 200-225, February.
    5. Acharya, Viral V. & Berger, Allen N. & Roman, Raluca A., 2018. "Lending implications of U.S. bank stress tests: Costs or benefits?," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 58-90.
    6. Peek, Joe & Rosengren, Eric S, 1997. "The International Transmission of Financial Shocks: The Case of Japan," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(4), pages 495-505, September.
    7. Şebnem Kalemli-Özcan & Luc Laeven & David Moreno, 2022. "Debt Overhang, Rollover Risk, and Corporate Investment: Evidence from the European Crisis," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 20(6), pages 2353-2395.
    8. Granja, João & Makridis, Christos & Yannelis, Constantine & Zwick, Eric, 2022. "Did the paycheck protection program hit the target?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(3), pages 725-761.
    9. Cecilia R. Caglio & R. Matthew Darst & Ṣebnem Kalemli-Özcan, 2021. "Collateral Heterogeneity and Monetary Policy Transmission: Evidence from Loans to SMEs and Large Firms," NBER Working Papers 28685, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. O'Hara, Maureen & Zhou, Xing (Alex), 2021. "Anatomy of a liquidity crisis: Corporate bonds in the COVID-19 crisis," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(1), pages 46-68.
    11. Jose M. Berrospide & Arun Gupta & Matthew P. Seay, 2021. "Un-used Bank Capital Buffers and Credit Supply Shocks at SMEs during the Pandemic," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2021-043, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    12. Ivashina, Victoria & Scharfstein, David, 2010. "Bank lending during the financial crisis of 2008," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(3), pages 319-338, September.
    13. Kurmann, André & Lalé, Etienne & Ta, Lien, 2021. "The Impact of COVID-19 on Small Business Dynamics and Employment: Real-time Estimates With Homebase Data," School of Economics Working Paper Series 2021-15, LeBow College of Business, Drexel University.
    14. Gustavo Joaquim & Felipe Netto, 2021. "Bank Incentives and the Effect of the Paycheck Protection Program," Working Papers 21-15, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    15. Duchin, Ran & Ozbas, Oguzhan & Sensoy, Berk A., 2010. "Costly external finance, corporate investment, and the subprime mortgage credit crisis," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(3), pages 418-435, September.
    16. Stiglitz, Joseph E & Weiss, Andrew, 1981. "Credit Rationing in Markets with Imperfect Information," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 393-410, June.
    17. Laura Alfaro & Anusha Chari & Andrew N. Greenland & Peter K. Schott, 2020. "Aggregate and Firm-Level Stock Returns During Pandemics, in Real Time," NBER Working Papers 26950, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alessandro Di Nola & Leo Kaas & Haomin Wang, 2023. "Rescue policies for small businesses in the Covid-19 recession," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 51, pages 579-603, December.
    2. Alessandro Di Nola & Leo Kaas & Haomin Wang, 2023. "Rescue policies for small businesses in the Covid-19 recession," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 51, pages 579-603, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bottero, Margherita & Lenzu, Simone & Mezzanotti, Filippo, 2020. "Sovereign debt exposure and the bank lending channel: Impact on credit supply and the real economy," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    2. Chodorow-Reich, Gabriel & Darmouni, Olivier & Luck, Stephan & Plosser, Matthew, 2022. "Bank liquidity provision across the firm size distribution," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(3), pages 908-932.
    3. Ozan Güler & Mike Mariathasan & Klaas Mulier & Nejat G. Okatan, 2021. "The real effects of banks' corporate credit supply: A literature review," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 59(3), pages 1252-1285, July.
    4. Rhys Bidder & John Krainer & Adam Shapiro, 2021. "De-leveraging or de-risking? How banks cope with loss," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 39, pages 100-127, January.
    5. Rhys Bidder & John Krainer & Adam Shapiro, 2021. "De-leveraging or de-risking? How banks cope with loss," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 39, pages 100-127, January.
    6. Sajad Ebrahimi & Ali Ebrahimnejad & Mahdi Rastad, 2019. "The Real Effects of Credit Supply Disruptions: The Case of 2011 Embezzlement Scandal in Iran," Working Papers 1316, Economic Research Forum, revised 21 Aug 2019.
    7. Correa, Ricardo & Sapriza, Horacio & Zlate, Andrei, 2021. "Wholesale funding runs, global banks' supply of liquidity insurance, and corporate investment," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    8. Barbieri, Claudio & Couaillier, Cyril & Perales, Cristian & Rodriguez d’Acri, Costanza, 2022. "Informing macroprudential policy choices using credit supply and demand decompositions," Working Paper Series 2702, European Central Bank.
    9. Lei Li & Philip E. Strahan & Song Zhang, 2020. "Banks as Lenders of First Resort: Evidence from the COVID-19 Crisis," NBER Working Papers 27256, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Guler, Ozan & Mariathasan, Mike & Mulier, Klaas & Okatan, Nejat G., 2019. "The Real Effects of Credit Supply: Review, Synthesis, and Future Directions," MPRA Paper 96542, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Glancy, David, 2021. "Housing bust, bank lending & employment: Evidence from multimarket banks," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    12. Berger, Allen N. & Demirgüç-Kunt, Asli, 2021. "Banking research in the time of COVID-19," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 57(C).
    13. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2022. "Financial Intermediation and the Economy," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2022-2, Nobel Prize Committee.
    14. Puri, Manju & Rocholl, Jörg & Steffen, Sascha, 2011. "Global retail lending in the aftermath of the US financial crisis: Distinguishing between supply and demand effects," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(3), pages 556-578, June.
    15. Ebrahimi, Sajad & Ebrahimnejad, Ali & Rastad, Mahdi, 2023. "Number of creditors and the real effects of credit supply disruptions," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    16. Kaboski, Joseph & Huneeus, Federico & Larrain, Mauricio & Schmukler, Sergio & Vera, Mario, 2022. "The Distribution of Crisis Credit: Effects on Firm Indebtedness and Aggregate Risk," CEPR Discussion Papers 17061, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    17. Duygan-Bump, Burcu & Levkov, Alexey & Montoriol-Garriga, Judit, 2015. "Financing constraints and unemployment: Evidence from the Great Recession," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 89-105.
    18. Christian Bittner & Diana Bonfim & Florian Heider & Farzad Saidi & Glenn Schepens & Carla Soares, 2022. "The Augmented Bank Balance-Sheet Channel of Monetary Policy," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 149, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    19. Kilian Huber, 2015. "The Persistence of a Banking Crisis," Discussion Papers 1532, Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM).
    20. Annalisa Ferrando & Alexander Popov & Gregory F. Udell, 2019. "Do SMEs Benefit from Unconventional Monetary Policy and How? Microevidence from the Eurozone," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 51(4), pages 895-928, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    leverage; small business; credit supply; bank capital; COVID-19;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • G28 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedbwp:94908. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Spozio (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbbous.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.