DOES INITIAL ACCESS TO BANK LOANS PREDICT START-UPS' FUTURE DEFAULT PROBABILITY? EVIDENCE FROM ITALY

In Europe, several countries have established public loan guarantee funds throughout direct/indirect loan programs to facilitate the access of SMEs and start-ups to bank credit. This paper investigates whether start-ups' level of access to bank loans during the early stage represents an imprinting factor with effects on the likelihood of survival once the firm reaches maturity. We rely on a firm-level longitudinal data set of 49,111 Italian startups born from 2003 to 2005. Implementing a 2SLS regression analysis we show that the initial level of start-up bank debt negatively influences the probability of default controlling for firm characteristics and performance. (JEL G21, M20, H32).