Estimating the financing gap of SMEs

Using a novel methodology, we estimate the gap between supply and demand financing of small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) financing in several European countries. We find the largest loan gap spreads are in Poland and the Netherlands. Specifically, our results show the upper boundary of the loan gap is the lowest in Romania and the highest in the Netherlands. Moreover, the lowest lower boundary of the equity gap is in the Netherlands, while the highest lower boundary is in Romania. Overall, our results suggest that there is a significant difference between the estimated demand and supply of equity, which is on average 3% of GDP.