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

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.