کیفیت اطلاعات حسابداری و اعتبار حسابداری به عنوان تعیین کننده های اعتبار بخش برای SME ها Accounting information quality and trust as determinants of credit granting to SMEs: the role of external audit

1 Introduction The availability of external finance for small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) is a topic of significant research interest among academics and a crucial issue for policymakers (Berger and Udell 2006; De la Torre et al. 2010). Especially, a high rate of interest is set on bank debt, as it is the most common source of external finance1 since their size precludes them from accessing capital markets. Even so, SMEs frequently experience problems when trying to access credit (Schiffer and Weder 2001; Beck et al. 2005, 2006, 2008; Hyytinen and Väänänen 2006). The most common argument is the opaqueness generally attributed to SMEs, which accentuates information asymmetries (Berger and Udell 1998; Berger et al. 2001; Mason and Stark 2004; Berger and Frame 2007; Hyytinen and Pajarinen 2008). It can be particularly challenging to collect information about SMEs. It is not unusual for small businesses to have a short history, a lack of formal or public records, or a deficiency of formal control systems (Bruns et al. 2008). This lack of information can put the banks at a disadvantage, by making it difficult to differentiate between high-risk and low-risk borrowers (Stiglitz and Weiss 1981; Berger and Udell 1998). Within this context, relationship lending is particularly relevant (Petersen and Rajan 1994; Boot 2000), as asymmetric information problems tend to be more acute for SMEs than for large firms (Berger et al. 2001). In relationship lending, the bank relies on a range of private information gathered through contact with the firm, their owners and managers and the local community in which they operate (Berger and Udell 2006). Furthermore, banks also use other lending techniques in order to evaluate the firm’s riskiness, such as the evaluation of financial statements or credit-scoring (Berger and Udell 2006). In addition, trying to minimise the probability of error, banks seek to formalise both the information-gathering process and the loan officer’s decision process (Bruns et al. 2008). However, despite all formal procedures to support the decision to grant credit, in many (or even most) cases, credit risk management is not automated, and it is ultimately based on a loan officer’s judgement and perceptions (De la Torre et al. 2010).