The paper addresses the question of the optimal capital structure of SMEs in Slovenia from the perspective of the proverbial SME financing gap. This has been widely acknowledged by several prominent international (e.g. European Investment Fund, OECD, World Bank etc.) and domestic financial institutions (e.g. SID bank, Bank of Slovenia etc.). Based on available official statistics, Slovenian SMEs have an impaired access to finance, and indicate non-optimal capital structures. This is also consistent with the literature, which describes SMEs (in terms of financing) as the “disadvantaged real sector” and “financially frustrated”. Particularly in the context of the current economic and financial crisis, SMEs in Slovenia have been shown to be the most affected segment of the real sector, also due to the existence of a strong credit crunch in the banking sector.
The purpose of the paper is to analyze the factors affecting the financial structures of Slovenian SMEs in the period 2006 to 2010 in a series of regression models, inspired by the work by Beck, Demirgüç-Kunt & Maksimovic (2008). It further analyzes the “deepening” of the SME financing gap in the context of the current economic and financial crisis in Slovenia, and provides estimates of the so called effect sizes (Cohen’s d coefficient) of the crisis. The data for our analysis is provided by the Agency of the Republic of Slovenia for Public Legal Records and Related Services (AJPES) to which all Slovenian enterprises are required to report to by law.
An important contribution of the paper to the growing field of development financing of the SME sector is also that it includes not only traditional institutional and firm factors, which influence a firm’s capital structure, but also builds on the characteristics of the Slovenian national and entrepreneurial culture to show that while the current supply side of SME financing needs consolidation and restructuring, there is also a great need for managing the demand side, which has been so far totally neglected.
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Uvodni rad:
Da
Datum:
13.06.2011.
Br. otvaranja:
910
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