【正文】 uction Some of the changes in Europe’s financial landscape should work in favour of SME finance. Firstly, new information and munication technologies contribute, at a lower cost, to reducing information asymmetries between lenders and borrowers, thereby making SME lending more attractive (see, among others, Frame et al. 2020). Secondly, partly due to progress in information technology, new banking methods are being developed and implemented. For instance, banks adopt new portfolio credit risk models that allow them to allocate and price their resources more , the use of credit risk transfer mechanisms (such as the securitarisation of SME loans) is spreading, allowing banks to focus on parativeadvantage activities, notably credit risk assessment, loan origination, and credit risk monitoring all activities crucial for the provision of finance to SMEs. Thirdly, equity capital is being increasingly available to SMEs through the development of (secondary) capital markets and venture capital finance. Fourthly, the second banking directive of the EU aims at boosting petition between banks, thereby improving the terms and conditions of bank finance, including those supplied to SMEs. Other features of Europe’s financial landscape have raised concerns about a possible deterioration of conditions for SME finance. Firstly, consolidation in national banking markets has reduced the number of banks and has in many EU countries, especially in the smaller ones, increased the market share of the topfive largest institutions . This may be detrimental to SME lending since there is evidence that large banks devote a lesser proportion of their assets to small business loans in parison to small, often regional Secondly, there is evidence (Davis, this volume) that capital markets and institutional investors are gaining ground over banks. Institutional investors are in petition with banks when collecting savings in the economy, but they tend to lend less to SMEs than banks do. Thirdly, a new capital adequacy framework for banks (Basel II) is in the making. The thrust of Basel II is to better align capital charges and, by extension, interest rates on loans with underlying credit risks. As SME lending is often perceived, rightly or wrongly, as particularly risky, many observers in particular SMEs themselves have been vocal in warning against a (further) deterioration of SME finance. 任毅敏：社會(huì)轉(zhuǎn)型期民企融資渠道探究 22 why financing of SMEs tends to be more challenging than financing of large firms. Reflecting these challenges, small businesses often have no other choice than to rely on bank relationships for their external financing while large firms may turn to banks as well as capital markets. We will also elaborate on the benefits and costs of relationship banking and briefly consider the impact of bank petition on relationship banking. In Section 3, we discuss the capital structure of the average European firm across different size classes and review similar results for Italy, Germany, and France. In Section 4, we evaluate whether SMEs in Europe suffer from credit constraints and whether financial market imperfections hamper the growth of panies. Section 5 begins with a brief empirical description of relationship banking in the three countries covered here and continues with an evaluation of the impact of bank consolidation on relationship banking in France. 2. Capital structure of the average firm across size classes In analysing the capital structure of firms, Wagenvoort distinguishes five different size classes: very small, small, mediumsized, large, and very large firms. To motivate this analysis, one needs to bear in mind that a possible lack of external financing for small businesses could show up on the liability side of their balance sheet. Looking over a long period and at Europe as a whole, the ratio of equity to total liabilities is broadly similar across size classes and, therefore, leverage is more or less the same for a typical SME and a typical large firm. The ratio of financial debt to total liabilities, which mainly contai ns bank loans in the case of SMEs,3 is also roughly equal across size classes. However, Wagenvoort also shows that there are striking differences in the capital structure of the average SME across EU countries. The three country studies confirm this result. Guiso shows that the financial debt of small Italian firms in proportion to their total assets is substantially lower than for large Italian firms. Guiso carefully explains that this difference is because many small firms do not have any loans outstanding at financial institutions. Indeed, conditional on having financial debt, the financial debt ratio and the maturity structure of financial debt are broadly similar across size classes. In sharp contrast with the Italian case, Hommel and Schneider find that the Mittelstand (. German small and mediumsized enterprises) is much more indebted than large German firms. Two thirds of German firms operate with an equity ratio lower than 20 percent, and 41 percent of German firms report equity ratios below 10 percent. This pares to a European average equity ratio of around onethird (see Wagenvoort). Dietsch finds a similar equity ratio for French panies regardless of their size. Overall, while the average European, French, and Italian SME does not appear to be undercapitalised, German SMEs are. Wagenvoort also analyses how firms’ cap