The 2008–2009 global financial crisis and the cost of debt capital among SMEs: Swedish evidence

Abstract

Purpose

The main purpose of this study is to describe and analyse the relationship between the 2008–2009 global financial crisis and small and medium-sized enterprises' cost of debt capital.

Design/methodology/approach

Statistical methods, including multiple OLS and dynamic panel data, were used to analyse a longitudinal cross-sectional panel dataset of 3865 Swedish SMEs operating in five industry sectors over the 2008–2015 period.

Findings

The results suggest that the cost of debt was influenced by the financial crisis and another macroeconomic factor, i.e. the interbank interest rate, and by firm-specific factors such as firm size and lagged cost of debt.

Originality/value

To the authors' best knowledge, this is one of few studies to examine the cost of debt among SMEs during the crisis and post-crisis periods using data from a large-scale, longitudinal, cross-sectional database.

Citation

Yazdanfar, D. and Öhman, P. (2021), "The 2008–2009 global financial crisis and the cost of debt capital among SMEs: Swedish evidence", Journal of Economic Studies, Vol. 48 No. 6, pp. 1097-1110. https://doi.org/10.1108/JES-02-2020-0064