This paper studies relationship lending in a framework where the cost of switching banks measures the degree of banking competition. The relationship lender’s (insider bank’s) informational advantage creates a lock-in effect, which is at its height when the switching cost is infinitesimal....

According to several empirical studies, US inflation and nominal interest rates, as well as the real interest rate, can be described as unit root processes. These results imply that nominal interest rates and expected inflation do not move one-for-one in the long run, which is not consistent...