ACCESS TO FINANCE: INNOVATIVE FIRMS’ PERCEPTIONS IN POST-TRANSITION EU MEMBERS

The post-transition EU member countries generally have to catch up with EU most developed economies in many aspects. Access to finance problems in these countries are potentially harmful to development of entrepreneurship, innovation performance and overall growth, leading to further lagging behind more advanced market economies. In this paper we analyse perceptions on access to finance in post-transition EU member countries. Special focus in the paper has been put on the differences between innovative and noninnovative firms. Furthermore, we seek to identify the characteristics of the firms that contribute to the gap formation. Empirical analysis in this paper relies on the latest available Business Environment Survey (BEEPS V), covering the 2012-2013 period. The sample in this study consists of 3,393 firms from eleven central and eastern European countries – EU members (Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovak Republic and Slovenia). The analysis expectedly revealed that innovative firms perceive financing constraints to be more important for their business, but somewhat unexpectedly the differences across countries are present. Although access to finance is more likely to be perceived as a problem by innovative firms, the firms that are either a segment of larger enterprise or established as joint venture, in general have less problems in financing their activities. When exploring the contributors to the perceptions in access to finance gap, only one variable proved to be important – female top management. It seems that if female top managers were more equally distributed between innovative and noninnovative firms, the perceptions on access to finance gap would be smaller.