This paper investigates the level of debt specialization across European firms relying on a cross-country comparable sample of manufacturing firms. We find that a number of firm characteristics – such as firm size and age – help predict the firm composition of the various types of debts (i.e. debt specialization) but not the level of each debt share. In particular, we observe that small and young firms have a more concentrated debt structure (i.e. they rely on few types of debt). However, these relationships are not linear and seem to be U-shaped. We also find that Spanish firms have the most diversified debt structure, and that diversified firms are less likely to experience a severe reduction in turnover.

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