This paper investigates the relationship between credit market competition and the availability of bank credit for firms of unobserved credit quality when firms pledge collateral to secure the loans. Loan data from the Spanish Credit Register shows that the average credit quality of borrowers...

This paper investigates the factors that determine the use of collateral in time series and cross-section data on the population of banks' loans to Spanish firms every year from 1984 to 2002 (over two million loans). Using the record of actual loan defaults of borrowers as a measure of credit...

This paper analyses the determinants of the probability of default (PD) of bank loans. We focus the discussion on the role of a limited set of variables (collateral, type of lender and bank borrower relationship) while controlling for the other explanatory variables. The study uses information...

Since bank credit lines are a major source of corporate funding, we examine the determinants of credit line usage with a comprehensive database of Spanish corporate credit lines. A line’s default status is a key factor driving its usage, which increases as a firm’s financial condition...

We identify the impact of short-term interest rates on credit risk-taking by analyzing a comprehensive credit register from Spain, a country where for the last twenty years monetary policy was mostly decided abroad. Discrete choice, within borrower comparison and duration analyses show that...

A common assumption in the academic literature is that franchise value plays a key role in limiting bank risk-taking. As market power is the primary source of franchise value, reduced competition in banking markets has been seen as promoting banking stability. We test this hypothesis using data...

This paper finds strong empirical support of a positive, although quite lagged, relationship between rapid credit growth and loan losses. Moreover, it contains empirical evidence of more lenient credit terms during boom periods, both in terms of screening of borrowers and in collateral...

While banks may change their credit supply due to bank balance-sheet shocks (the local lending channel), firms can react by adjusting their sources of financing in equilibrium (the aggregate lending channel). We provide a methodology to identify the aggregate (firm-level) effects of the lending...

To identify credit availability we analyze the extensive and intensive margins of lending with loan applications and all loans granted in Spain. We find that during the period analyzed both worse economic and tighter monetary conditions reduce loan granting, especially to firms or from banks...

Using data on marginal interest rates of loan and deposit products by Spanish banks, we find that the level of interest rates on loans (deposits) across geographic markets decrease (increase) with the number of banks in each market, and that the level of interest rates on loans increases with...