O financiamento das pequenas empresas e o desequilibrio territorial rural-urbano: o caso da provincia da Coruña

After the worldwide financial crisis and the restructuring of the banking industry, we wonder whether bank credit constraints are more relevant today for Galician SMEs in rural areas. The objective of our research is the study of trade credit as an alternative to bank credit, the difficulties to get bank financing, and its relationship with rural-urban territorial imbalances. The results are preliminary, both because of data available and econometric choices. Nonetheless, using a sample of industrial companies in the province of A Coruna, we observe that the volumes of trade credit are relatively low in the European context. Firms that operate in rural municipalities grant less trade credit than urban ones, while they finance more via suppliers – consistent with the hypothesis of bank credit constraingts – though the effect is not significant for independent businesses.