The pass-through from the money market rate to several bank lending rates and the government bond rate is investigated for 12 European countries over the period 1980-2000, by applying a SVAR based on the Cholesky decomposition. Simulations of a one percent point rise in the money market rate,...

Using a novel way to identify relationship and transaction banks, we study how banks’ lending techniques affect funding to SMEs over the business cycle. For 21 countries we link the lending techniques that banks use in the direct vicinity of firms to these firms’ credit constraints at two...

Using a novel way to identify relationship and transaction banks, we study how banks’ lending techniques affect funding to SMEs over the business cycle. For 21 countries we link the lending techniques that banks use in the direct vicinity of firms to these firms’ credit constraints at two...

Earlier studies have documented that foreign banks charge lower lending rates and interest spreads than domestic banks. We hypothesize that this may stem from the superior efficiency of foreign entrants that they decide to pass onto borrowers (“performance hypothesis”), but could also...

Using a novel way to identify relationship and transaction banks, we study how banks’ lending techniques affect funding to SMEs over the business cycle. For 21 countries we link the lending techniques that banks use in the direct vicinity of firms to these firms’ credit constraints at two...

Banks have been heavily involved in securitization. We study whether the involvedness of a firm’s main bank into different types of securitization activity -- asset backed securities (ABS) and covered bonds -- influences credit supply before and during the 2007-8 financial crisis. Both types...

The recent financial crisis has reopened the debate on the impact of informal and formal finance on firm growth in developing countries. Using unique survey data, we find that informal finance is associated with higher sales growth for small firms and lower sales growth for large firms. We...

How do banks react to increased interbank competition?Recent banking theory offers conflicting predictions about the impact of competition on bank orientation í L H WKH choice of relationship based versus transactional banking í DQG EDQN LQGXVWU\ specialization.We empirically investigate the...

A recent string of theoretical papers highlights the importance of geographical distance in explaining pricing and availability of loans to small firms.Lenders located in the vicinity of small firms have significantly lower monitoring and transaction costs, and hence considerable market power if...

Credit contracts are non-exclusive. A string of theoretical papers shows that nonexclusivity generates important negative contractual externalities. Employing a unique dataset, we identify how the contractual externality stemming from the non-exclusivity of credit contracts affects credit...