This research investigates how SME performance, the typology of loans and the length and scope of relationships between small banks and SMEs affect the margin adjusted for the risk that each customer generates. After analysing 4285 firm-year observations from Finnish banks, the quality of a SME’s performance is found to be the major factor in explaining the risk-adjusted profitability of banks. However, the length and scope of a relationship and the loan dimensions also play an important role.

Research on relationship lending pays only marginal attention to the role of loan managers’ trust in the managers of SMEs. Trust literature suggests that trust reduces agency costs. Thus, trust is expected to be positively related to the amount of short-term credit granted and negatively related to SMEs’ risk of being credit constrained. Results from six banks characterised by a German culture and three banks characterised by an Italian culture suggest that this is indeed the case: SMEs that enjoy a high level of trust from loan managers obtain more credit and are less credit constrained.

Why are distortionary policies used when seemingly Pareto improvements exist? According to a standard textbook argument, a Pareto improvement can be obtained by eliminating the distortions, compensating the losers with a lump sum transfer, and redistributing the gains that are left over. We relax the assumption that winners know the losses suffered by the losers and show that the informationally efficient method of compensating losers may involve the use of seemingly inefficient (but informationally efficient) distortionary policies. The risk of overcompensating losers may make distortions informationally efficient, as there are points on the Pareto frontier where distortions are used.

Firms can be credit constrained either because a loan has been denied by the lender or because they decide not to apply for such a loan due to expected rejection. Using a large sample of European small and medium enterprises, we investigate the relationship between gender and credit constraints. Although no evidence is found that financial institutions are biased against female managers, female-run firms are less likely to file a loan application, as they anticipate being rejected. As a consequence, firms managed by women obtain less bank financing.

We explore the role of government initiatives fostering entrepreneurship—in the form of tax advantages and government support—in influencing the probability that entrepreneurial firms obtain bank credit and are not discouraged from applying for a loan. We propose that government initiatives fostering entrepreneurship should allow entrepreneurial firms to access more bank credit by reducing the risk incurred by lenders. We simultaneously estimate the probability of obtaining credit when a firm applies for a loan and the probability that the firm has been discouraged when it does not apply for a loan. In both cases we control for endogeneity. Our results are based on 18,872 observations (from the European Central Bank (ECB) SAFE dataset and Global Entrepreneurship Monitor – GEM) and show that government initiatives improve the probability of entrepreneurial firms obtaining bank credit but do not affect the probability of being discouraged from borrowing. The results also suggest that government initiatives fostering entrepreneurship are of most benefit to younger, smaller, high-growth, and more innovative firms that operate in contexts where the demand for, and accordingly the competition for, bank credit is strongest.