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Journal of Banking & Finance Vol. 50 2015

Bank ownership and credit over the business cycle: Is lending by state banks less procyclical?

Ata Can Bertay1; Asli Demirgüç-Kunt; Harry Huizinga1,2

1 Tilburg University · 2 Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract

This paper finds that lending by state banks is less procyclical than lending by private banks, especially in countries with good governance. Lending by state banks in high income countries is even countercyclical. On the liability side, state banks expand their total liabilities and, in particular, their non-deposit liabilities relatively little during booms. Public banks also report loan non-performance more evenly over the business cycle. Overall our results suggest that state banks can play a useful role in stabilizing credit over the business cycle as well as during periods of financial instability. However, the track record of state banks in credit allocation remains quite poor, questioning the wisdom of using state banks as a short term countercyclical tool.

DOI
10.1016/j.jbankfin.2014.03.012
Volume
50
Pages
326-339
Language
en
Sources
openalex crossref bibtex:phds-export.bib

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