78
Trade Finance during the Great Trade Collapse
Figure 4.3 Access to Bank and Supplier Financing, by Country share of surveyed firms 53
Bulgaria
49 84
Hungary
42 89
Latvia
61 80
Lithuania
61 72
Romania
58 58 60
Turkey 0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
percent firms with supplier credit
firms with a loan or line of credit
Source: World Bank 2007.
formal credit users, it has the second-highest rate of firms using supplier credit, which might support prior evidence that firms turn to supplier credit when formal credit (which is generally cheaper) is not available. Measure of Crisis Severity A measure from Didier and Calderon (2009) is used to gauge the country-level severity of the financial crisis. The Index of Economic Turbulence is based on a factor analysis summarizing six financial and real indicators of crisis severity, including growth in exports, growth in real gross domestic product, and variation in industrial production between the first quarters of fiscal 2008 and fiscal 2009. The more negative the value, the greater the crisis severity. Notably, except for Turkey, all of the surveyed countries were among the 10 hardest-hit economies, listed in table 4.2, among 65 countries for which the measure was calculated. Empirical Results The main results are shown in Table 4.3.2 All independent variables are lagged, using data from the ES that corresponds to fiscal year 2007, which allows for the isolation of cause and effect.