In this paper, the effect of local bank branch closures on new firm formation in Sweden is analysed using a panel database that captures the geographical locations of all Swedish bank branches in 2007 and 2013. The previous research has shown that the further a firm is located away from the bank, the higher the monitoring costs will be for the banks. Furthermore, an increase in the distance to the banks will also increase information asymmetry because of the banks’ eroded ability to collect and analyse soft information. Due to the high risks associated with the lack of information and uncertainty, banks might not be as willing to extend credits to a distant firm compared to a nearby firm. Using spatial econometric analysis at a municipal level, it is shown that bank proximity to firms, unemployment rate, industry structures, income growth, change in housing price and percentage of immigrants are vital for new firm formation in Sweden. From the spatial Durbin model with fixed effects, an increase in the weighted distance to the nearest bank branches is shown to affect new firm formation negatively.

The dynamics of banking accessibility and its relationship with new firm formation can vary across space and time due to spatial contexts. With increasing bank branch closures in Sweden, it is even more critical to understand where interventions are needed and at which scale, in order to implement effective policy. Thus, spatial context is incorporated into the analysis with the use of the multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) model. To overcome a potential endogeneity problem, an instrumental variable approach is applied. A two-stage least squares (2SLS) model is employed in which two instrumental variables are utilised to instrument the physical accessibility to the nearest bank branch in 2013. The MGWR results show that the geographical distance to the nearest bank branch has a negative association with the new firm formation in all Swedish municipalities, with little-to-no spatial heterogeneity. Further robustness tests show that the relationship between the geographical distance to the nearest bank branch and new firm formation are weaker in 2007, which shows temporal changes in the strength of the relationship over time. A policy implication from the analysis shows it is ideal to focus on the geographical accessibility to bank branches in all the Swedish municipalities with a single policy. 

This paper studies the effects of bank branch accessibility on new firm formation in different industries after the closures of bank branches between 2007 and 2013. Spatial Durbin models are used for a panel dataset of two years — 2007 and 2013 — at the municipal level in all 290 Swedish municipalities. Potential endogeneity issues are controlled for by using an instrumental variable approach to estimate proximity to bank branches. Proximity to bank branches influences new firm formation in some industries in Swedish municipalities, with more pronounced effects in capital-intensive industries, such as manufacturing, ‘transport and communications’, and ‘education, health, and others’, as indicated by the results of using a proxy for proximity to bank branches weighted by firm population. The results of using the proxy for proximity to bank branches weighted by labour population show significant negative effects of proximity to bank branch on new firm formation in the ‘education, health and others’ industry. This study shows that it is important to consider the effects of proximity to bank branches on new firm formation in some industries that are more capital intensive. Policy-makers can use the findings of this research to design policies to increase entrepreneurship in certain industries.

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate the effects of accessibility to bank branches on the capital structure of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by analysing the change in three different leverage measures (total, short-term and long-term leverage).

Design/method/approach – The analysis was conducted using random effects models on two data samples. The full sample consists of 19,064 SMEs while the other sample used to estimate the long-term leverage consists of 8,707 SMEs for two years, 2007 and 2013.

Findings – The results show that the distance to the nearest bank branch has a negative relationship with total leverage and short-term leverage but a small positive relationship with long-term leverage. An interesting result from the robustness test shows that the distance to the nearest bank has a negative relationship with long-term leverage in SMEs in rural areas.

Practical implications – SME owners and policy-makers may benefit from this research amidst the changing banking landscape; policy-makers can help to increase access to other types of funding to SMEs in bank deserts by increasing the volume of governmental loans.

Originality/value – To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the distance to the nearest bank branch office has not been examined in earlier literature as a determinant of leverage for SMEs.