Recent research has identified a key subset of the business population that comprises firms who had sought external finance but subsequently withdrew from the credit market completely despite still requiring finance. Utilising the UK’s Longitudinal Small Business Survey between 2015 and 2020, we identify the consequences in terms of lost jobs and sales of these small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) dropping out of the credit market for finance. We conduct our analysis at the regional and sub-regional level and found that around 230,000 SMEs have dropped out of the UK credit market and that in many localities this has reduced job creation and sales income growth. We conclude that this exclusionary borrowing behaviour will add further to existing regional and sub-regional economic inequalities in the UK, making the ‘levelling up’ agenda a very elusive policy objective.

中文翻译：

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被抛在后面？英国中小企业被排除在信贷市场之外的局部后果

最近的研究发现了商业群体的一个关键子集，其中包括那些寻求外部融资但随后尽管仍需要融资却完全退出信贷市场的公司。利用 2015 年至 2020 年英国纵向小型企业调查，我们确定了这些退出融资信贷市场的中小企业 (SME) 在失业和销售方面的后果。我们在区域和次区域层面进行分析，发现大约 23 万家中小企业退出了英国信贷市场，在许多地方，这减少了就业机会的创造和销售收入的增长。我们的结论是，这种排他性借贷行为将进一步加剧英国现有的区域和次区域经济不平等，使“均衡化”议程成为一个非常难以捉摸的政策目标。