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Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) suffered a sharp contraction in their borrowing from banks during the Great Recession. Analyzing a large firm-level database for European countries, the paper shows that trade credit amplified the liquidity squeeze on SMEs, with adverse effects on their real activity. SMEs sharply increased their net trade credit and thus transferred financial resources to larger firms. Given the large weight of SMEs in the economy of European countries, the liquidity squeeze of SMEs likely contributed to the depth of the output fall and the slow recovery in Europe during the Great Recession.

We find that European SMEs significantly increased their net trade credit to sales ratio during the Great Recession. For the aggregate of SMEs, trade credit did not provide any buffer to the contraction in bank loans. In fact, through increased net trade credit, SMEs suffered a squeeze in their liquidity and this phenomenon reflects the weak bargaining power of SMEs in their trade credit relationship with larger firms. Therefore, increased net trade credit by SMEs does not reflect an efficient reallocation of credit, and it calls for policy actions. These policy actions are highly relevant, given that the liquidity squeeze had significant adverse effects on the real performance of SMEs, contributing to the recession and to the subsequent timid recovery of European economies. We explore various policies that could be implemented to relieve SMEs from the liquidity squeeze induced by the increase in their receivables.

The Great Recession has generated renewed interest in the phenomenon of creditless recoveries. This paper studies the mechanisms behind such phenomenon, analyzing data on industries for a large set of countries over a forty year period from 1963 to 2003. We find that during creditless recoveries there is a significant reallocation of resources away from sectors that are more dependent on bank credit, both for their investments and for their short-term liquidity needs. The adverse effects of credit constraints are softened in sectors that rely more on alternative sources of financing, such as trade credit, or in sectors that have more favorable access to credit because of higher collateral. We thus conclude that creditless recoveries do not simply reflect a natural process of deleveraging, but they may imply significant inefficiencies in the allocation of resources.