Using data at the bank–firm level collected through the 9th UniCredit Survey conducted in 2012 on a large sample of small businesses, we investigate the extent to which a large international bank offers better credit conditions to enterprises that use ICT more extensively. The results, which are robust to selection and endogeneity issues, show that banks tend to grant increasing volumes of credit to such enterprises. We interpret this evidence as the ceteris paribus effect of ICT adoption by small businesses on the quality of information transmitted to banks. Another possible interpretation is that banks consider ICT adoption as a signal of firms’ willingness to innovate. We also discuss implications concerning the key role that technology plays in changing the ‘arm’s length’ versus ‘relationship’ lending paradigms

This paper assesses the role of concentrated bank borrowing in explaining the extensive and intensive margins of export, while accounting for the simultaneous relationship between exporting and innovation. Concentrated bank borrowing proxies for the intensity of the bank-firm relationship and is a strategy often pursued by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in order to overcome information asymmetries and improve access to external finance. Our results show that a tight relationship between an SME and its main bank increases both the firm's probability of exporting and its export intensity. This positive effect is only marginally mediated by the SME's increased propensity to introduce product innovation. We further discuss the financial and non-financial channels through which the intensity of the bank-firm relationship supports SMEs' international activities.

Using data for a large sample of small firms collected through the 8th UniCredit Survey conducted in 2011, we investigate the extent to which banks of different size reward innovative firms, in terms of both access to lending and volume of credit granted. We find that more innovative firms are associated with weak credit rationing. Using instrumental variable techniques to manage the endogenous nature of innovation, we show that a large bank more strongly supports product innovation, whereas there is no substantial difference in the extent to which small and large banks provide credit to small firms undertaking process innovations

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