This paper studies the effects of gender interactions on the supply of and demand for credit using data from a large Albanian lender. We document that first-time borrowers assigned to officers of the opposite sex are less likely to return for a second loan. The effect is larger when officers have little prior exposure to borrowers of the other gender and when they have more discretion to act on their gender beliefs, as proxied by financial market competition and branch size. We also find that first-time borrowers matched with opposite-sex officers pay higher interest rates and receive smaller and shorter-maturity loans, but do not experience higher arrears. Our results are consistent with the existence of a gender bias and learning effects that lead to the disappearance of the bias.

We conduct face-to-face interviews with bank chief executive officers to classify 397 banks across 21 countries as relationship or transaction lenders. We then use the geographic coordinates of these banks’ branches and of 14,100 businesses to analyze how the lending techniques of banks near firms are related to credit constraints at two contrasting points of the credit cycle. We find that while relationship lending is not associated with credit constraints during a credit boom, it alleviates such constraints during a downturn. This positive role of relationship lending is stronger for small and opaque firms and in regions with a more severe economic downturn. Moreover, relationship lending mitigates the impact of a downturn on firm growth and does not constitute evergreening of loans.