Using a Vector Autoregressive framework of analysis, we show that banks contract their supply of business credit in response to an exogenous increase in economic policy uncertainty. This contraction takes two main, distinct forms. On the one hand, banks restrict their supply of spot funds, which we document using flows of loans and term loan originations. On the other hand, banks also curtail their provision of liquidity insurance, reducing the amount of new credit lines and embedding in them a pricing structure that reduces the probability of borrowers drawing down on the lines. At the peak of the responses, we find that a one-standard-deviation increase in EPU causes a contraction in the supply of business loans between 3 and 5% on the extensive margin.

We study the transmission mechanism of monetary policy through business loans and illustrate subtle aspects of its functioning that relate to the contractual characteristics and the borrower–lender types of loans. We show that the puzzling increase in business loans in response to monetary tightening, documented before the Great Recession, is largely driven by drawdowns from existing commitments at large banks. Spot loans also rise and take a considerable amount of time to adjust. Banks, nonetheless, do curtail credit supply by shortening maturities of new loans. Following the Great Recession, the mechanism has worked differently, with loan responses to monetary tightening displaying a significant downward shift.

We augment Henderson et al. (2012)'s two-signal model of true GDP growth with a third signal to overcome its underidentification problem. The additional moment conditions from the third signal help fully identify all model parameters without ad-hoc calibrations of the GDP's signal-to-noise ratio. We characterize the necessary properties of the third signal. Using the model, we recover the optimal weight of official GDP in the composite true GDP growth estimates, which varies with the quality of the national statistics. The model improves on existing methodologies that use signals to measure true income.