Recent empirical findings by Elsas, 2005, Degryse and Ongena, 2007 document a U-shaped effect of market concentration on relationship lending which cannot be easily accommodated by the investment and strategic theories of bank lending orientation. In this paper, we suggest that this non-monotonicity can be explained by looking at the organizational structure of local credit markets. We provide evidence that marginal increases in interbank competition are detrimental to relationship lending in markets where large and out-of-market banks are predominant. By contrast, where relational lending technologies are already widely in use in the market by a large group of small mutual banks, an increase in competition may drive banks to further cultivate their extensive ties with customers.

This paper analyzes financial contagion in a banking system where banks are linked to each other by interbank claims and common assets. We find that asset commonality makes banking systems more vulnerable to idiosyncratic liquidity shocks and helps to determine which interbank network structures are resistant to contagion. When the degree of commonality is homogeneous across banks, the complete interbank network, in which each bank borrows evenly from all the others, displays the usual robust-yet-fragile property. However, in the more general case of heterogeneous common asset holdings the complete interbank network is less resilient than other incomplete networks but not necessarily the most fragile. We also show that the degree and variability of asset commonality between banks and the way this intertwines with the cross-holdings of interbank deposits have important implications for macroprudential regulation.

Abstract In many countries, Mutual Loan-Guarantee Societies (MGSs) are assuming ever-increasing importance for small business lending. In this paper we provide a theory to rationalize the raison d’être of MGSs. The basic intuition is that the motivation for MGSs lies in the inefficiencies created by adverse selection, when borrowers do not have enough wealth to satisfy collateral requirements and induce self-selecting contracts. In this setting, we view MGSs as a wealth-pooling mechanism that allows otherwise inefficiently rationed borrowers to obtain credit.

Abstract Bank deregulation and progress in information technology altered the geographical diffusion of banking structures and instruments, and reduced operational distance between banks and local economies. Although, the consolidation of the banking industry promoted the geographical concentration of banking decision-making centres and increased functional distance between local banking systems and local borrowers. This paper focuses on the impact that these spatial diffusion-concentration phenomena had on the financing constraints of Italian firms over the period 1996–2003. Our findings show that greater functional distance stiffened financing constraints, especially for small firms, while smaller operational distance did not always enhance credit availability.

In this paper we explore the effects of bank–borrower physical proximity on price and non-price aspects of small business lending in local credit markets. Along the price dimension, our analysis reveals that interest rates increase with bank–borrower distance and decrease with the distance between borrower and other competing banks. Along the quantity dimension, we observe that more distant borrowers are more likely to experience binding credit limits. We also show that the quantity effects of bank–borrower distance are concentrated among less transparent firms. Our findings are consistent with pricing based on marginal costs that reflect information-based factors, and are in contrast to the established paradigm, where banks adopt spatial discriminatory pricing rules when lending to small-sized enterprises.

In this paper we study the relevance of the gender of the contracting parties involved in lending. We show that female entrepreneurs face tighter credit availability, even though they do not pay higher interest rates. The effect is independent of the information available about the borrower and holds if we control for unobservable individual effects. The gender of the loan officer is also important: we find that female officers are more risk-averse or less self-confident than male officers as they tend to restrict credit availability to new, un-established borrowers more than their male counterparts.

One of the most lively-debated effects of banking acquisitions is the change in lending and asset allocation of the target bank in favour of transaction-based products, at the expense of small and informationally opaque borrowers. These changes may be the result of two distinct restructuring strategies pursued by the acquirer with respect to the asset portfolio of the acquired bank: a cleaning strategy (CS), in which the acquirer makes a clean sweep of all the negative net present value activities in the portfolio of the acquired bank, and a portfolio strategy (PS), in which the acquiring bank permanently changes the portfolio allocation of the acquired bank. In this paper we focus on Italian bank acquisitions and test which asset restructuring strategy was predominantly pursued over the period 1997–2003. Moreover, we distinguish acquisitions according to their geographic diversifying character and to the physical and cultural distances that separate acquiring from acquired banks. When we look at the mean value, we do not find clear evidence of a primacy either of CSs or PSs. When we separate in-market from out-of-market bank acquisitions, however, results show that the CSs prevail only in the former type of deals, while in the latter the portfolio of acquired banks is subject to PSs. Finally, we find that differences in asset restructuring strategies can be explained by differences in corporate culture and the workplace environment of the dealing partners.

This paper investigates whether firms’ access to credit is characterized by state dependence. We introduce a first-order Markov model of credit restriction with sample selection that makes it possible to identify state dependence in presence of unobserved heterogeneity. The results, based on a representative sample of Italian firms, show that state dependence in access to credit is a statistically and economically significant phenomenon and that this is more prominent among medium-large firms.

Abstract Using firm-level survey information, we investigate whether relationship lending affects firms’ employment decisions in the face of negative sales shock. We find that firms with a durable relationship with their main bank display significantly less employment growth sensitivity to such shocks, especially where these are transitory. The result is stronger for younger and smaller firms that benefit from tighter bank-firm relationships, and for firms in sectors or economic environments where the costs of employment adjustment are greater. Our findings indicate that relationship lending provides liquidity insurance to firms to meet their demand for labor hoarding.

This paper examines how the cost of bank debt reflects public information about borrower quality, and whether such information complements or substitutes the private information of banks. Using a sample of small business loans, and the award of a competitive public subsidy as an observable positive signal of external certification, we find that certification is associated with a lower cost of debt for subsidy recipients if the amount of private information of the lender is limited or the local credit market is less competitive. Public information loses importance once the bank accumulates information over the course of the lending relationship or the credit market is more competitive. Our results highlight a positive effect of external certification, driven by the signal it provides to both the lending bank and its competitors, and suggest that public and private information can be substitutes in the pricing of bank debt.