This paper studies the mechanism of adverse selection in the credit market using a sample of mortgage applications that are approved by lenders but rejected by applicants. We find that a low-risk applicant is more likely to reject a loan offer, except when the offer is made by an informed lender. Using jumbo mortgage and loan acceptance rate data to proxy for the information advantage, we find that lenders with a lower likelihood of being rejected are indeed better informed than others.

We examine China’s June 2013 liquidity crunch as a negative shock to banks and analyze the wealth effects on exchange-listed firms. Our findings suggest that liquidity shocks to financial institutions negatively impact borrower performance, particularly borrowers reporting outstanding loans at the end of 2012. Stock valuations of firms with long-term bank relationships, however, outperform the market and experience smaller subsequent declines in investment than peers lacking solid banking relationships. This effect is the strongest for firms that enjoy good relations with China’s large state-owned banks or foreign banks, and weakest for firms whose connections are solely with local banks. We document a positive correlation between the stock performances of firms and the stock performances of lender banks and the likelihood of lender banks operating as net lenders in the interbank market. These results suggest that banks transmit liquidity shocks to their borrowing firms and that a long-term bank-firm relationship may mitigate the negative effects of a liquidity shock.