Banking system and public support for entrepreneurial financing of SMEs: bibliometric and literature review
Mots-clés :
SMEs, entrepreneurial finance, banking relationships, public support, credit guarantees, bibliometric analysisRésumé
This study explores the connections between the banking system, corporate finance and government support for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through literature. It combines a bibliometric analysis of a corpus of documents from Scopus published between 2015 and 2025 examined in 698 articles, with a contextual study of the support mechanisms in Morocco. Bibliometrix and VOSviewer are used to analyze the performance of annual publications, the notoriety of citations and the joint occurrence of keywords. Annual production increases from 35 to 95 documents, an increase of 171.4%. Moreover, the most cited publications specify that the corpus goes beyond bank credit to include private equity, financing restrictions, and entrepreneurial development. These results support a multidimensional vision of SME financing, where access to finance interacts with the production of information, risk sharing and the ability of companies to implement development projects.
The findings show that annual production increased from 35 publications in 2015 to 95 in 2025, while the most-cited studies extend beyond conventional bank credit to venture capital, financing constraints, sustainability, innovation and digitalisation. The keyword network likewise identifies several connected thematic communities involving SMEs, banking, financing strategies, innovation and technological change. These patterns support a multidimensional view in which access to finance interacts with information production, risk sharing, organisational capabilities and the capacity of firms to implement development projects.
The analysis proposes a unifying model that links the thematic structure of the study to questions concerning the additionality of financing, the complementarity of levers and the divergences between companies and geographical locations.
However, the volume of publications and the combination of keywords do not demonstrate the effectiveness of specific programs. Conclusions are conditional on the cited dataset and are descriptive rather than causal in nature. Future work should combine transparent bibliography protocols with firm-level evidence of funding solicitations, program adherence and subsequent outcomes.
