Regional differences of macroeconomic variable in the Default Rate of Small-Medium Enterprises: The Italian Case

Italian Small-Medium Enterprises have experienced different levels of default rate according to the regional area where they are located. For this reason we think that it is worth studying if SMEs located in some specific areas are more affected by the business cycle and identifying which are the macroeconomic variable that most influence the SME default rate in each area, in order to give a tool to lenders and borrowers to evaluate their credit portfolio exposition to identify which are the main macroeconomic risks due to the location of their business. We divide the data in 5 territorially homogeneous groups (clusters). For each cluster the macroeconomic variables are identified by OLS regression and stepwise selection. When all macroeconomic variables have been identified for each cluster, we estimate the coefficient by a Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) model. We find business cycle affect differently SMEs default rates are according the area.