Journal Article

COVID-19 lending support and regional levelling up : evidence from UK loan guarantee schemes

Abstract

The economic consequences of COVID-19 were severe with restricted economic activity generating a liquidity crisis for many firms. To address the systemic impact of this liquidity shock, governments around the world rapidly introduced a range of loan guarantee schemes. In the UK, more than 1 million businesses accessed these schemes. Using a novel, comprehensive dataset, this paper explores the regional distribution of access to these schemes and how this was mediated by regional differences in lending institution. Our results show that while the schemes were national and unaligned with regional policy, access favoured firms in poorer regions, and regional differences in lending institutions had a significant influence on the nature of lending.

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Authors

Cowling, Marc
Nightingale, Paul
Wilson, Nick

Oxford Brookes departments

Oxford Brookes Business School

Dates

Year of publication: 2023
Date of RADAR deposit: 2023-03-27

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

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Related resources

This RADAR resource is the Accepted Manuscript of COVID-19 lending support and regional levelling up: evidence from UK loan guarantee schemes