The Shielding Effect of Access to Finance on Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises during the COVID-19 Crisis: Comparing Fintech and Traditional Finance

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 outbreak has caused a considerable cash crunch among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In this context, we explore whether financial technology (fintech) and traditional finance could produce a shielding effect on SMEs to reduce the impact of COVID-19. Utilizing a unique dataset of China’s SMEs in the pre- and post-periods of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, we find that in regions with a well-developed fintech and traditional finance environment and in SMEs that utilize more fintech and traditional finance instruments, the pandemic has had less of an impact on the cash shortage. More importantly, this study indicates that fintech is more effective in reducing the negative impact of the pandemic and helping SMEs recover in the post-pandemic period. Our analyses may shed light on the crisis management and economic reconstitution of SMEs.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• cash crunch
• financial technology
• small and medium-sized enterprises

JEL:

• G32
• G38
• H51

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the editors, the two anonymous reviewers, Yuan Wang from Shandong Normal University, Xinyue Zhang from Shandong University, and other professionals from the School of Management Shandong University for their valuable suggestions. The program of the National Social Science Foundation of China (No. 18BJY108) is also acknowledged for supporting our study.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/1540496X.2022.2072201

Notes

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Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China (grant number 18BJY108).