ABSTRACT
The Bank of Finland has been involved in conducting a semi-annual survey on Finnish service-sector firms' views on their financing since autumn 1994. The survey has charted the firms' acquisition, availability, terms and servicing of credit as well as their growth and profitability prospects. Descriptive analysis on the survey indicates that the Finnish firms have been successful in their activities during 1994 - 1998. However, the decrease in the firms' credit availability problems has been even more substantial than the decrease in the firms' profitability problems. Results from an econometric analysis based on the survey data show that both firmspecific factors and lender-borrower relationships affect the probability of credit availability problems. Moreover, the analysis indicates that the economic condition of the banking sector has an impact on credit availability.
