Entrepreneur Debt Aversion and Financing Decisions: Evidence from COVID-19 Support Programs

The authors thank Camelia Kuhnen (editor), two anonymous referees, Martin Brown, Brighton Chotiputsilp, Vicente Cuñat, Julian Franks, Juanita Gonzalez-Uribe, Tobin Hanspal, Alex He, Matti Keloharju, Nazirul Khalim, Christine Laudenbach, Diogo Mendes, Daniel Metzger, Marcelo Ortiz, Miguel Palacios, Kim Peijnenburg, Vesa Puttonen, Asad Rauf, David Robinson, Christoph Schneider, Srinivasan Selvam, Raj Sharma, Oliver Spalt, Andre van Hoorn, Alexander Wagner, Ern Hui Wee, and Ziwei Zhao, as well as conference participants at the 2023 China International Conference on Finance, 2023 CIRET/EK/Statistics Finland/Bank of Finland/KOF Workshop on surveys for economic development in difficult times, 2022 Financial Management Association Asia-Pacific Conference, the 2022 Endless Summer Conference on Financial Intermediation and Corporate Finance, the 2022 Midwest Finance Association Conference, the 2022 Barcelona School of Economics Summer Forum, the 2022 Research in Behavioral Finance Conference, the 2022 Corporate Finance Day, the 2021 Paris December Finance Meeting, the 2021 HEC Entrepreneurship Workshop, the 2021 conference on Behavioral Finance, Governance and Accounting, the 2020 Conference on the Theories and Practices of Securities and Financial Markets, and the 2021 Annual Meeting of the German Finance Association, and seminar participants at the Rotterdam School of Management, University of St. Gallen, and the Benelux Corporate Finance Network for helpful comments; Taavi-Okko Tasanko for excellent research assistance; and the Federation of Finnish Enterprises for help in administering our survey, as well as for allowing us to add questions to their own Yrittäjägallup-survey conducted in April 2023. S. Torstila thanks University of California Berkeley, Haas School of Business, where part of this work was completed.