Access to bank financing and start‐up resilience: A survival analysis across business sectors in a time of crisis

The presence of exogenous global shocks due to the 2007/2008 economic and financial crisis current pandemic are deeply hampering operators' overall ability access credit. Small medium-sized enterprises start-ups most severely affected by credit rationing. This paper investigates whether bank loans in early stage a start-up's lifecycle is predictor firm's default time crisis. We ground our analysis on firm-level longitudinal data set Italian new capital companies born from 2004 2006. Implementing discrete-time proportional hazard model we study their likelihood up 2014 after controlling for consistent number other firms, industry innovation related characteristics. main findings confirm that significantly enhances resilience start-ups. By taking into consideration sectoral degree where firms operate, also find financing still exerts positive influence firm survival both less more innovative industries. However, there evidence stronger long-term debt operating low- medium-low