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Journal of Corporate Finance Vol. 55 2019

Keep walking? Geographical proximity, religion, and relationship banking

Thorsten Beck1; Steven Ongena2,3; İlkay Şendeniz-Yüncü4

1 Centre for Economic Policy Research · 2 University of Zurich · 3 Swiss Finance Institute · 4 Middle East Technical University

open access

Abstract

We investigate the geographical proximity of firms to their relationship banks. We find that Islamic banks are more remote to their borrowers. We also find that the probability for a firm to connect to a bank substantially decreases in distance, but that the choice along bank characteristics determines how potent distance is in its impact. If the bank in the vicinity is an Islamic bank, distance plays a more muted role, especially in cities with a high conservative party vote and higher trust in religious institutions. Overall, these findings suggest that the presence of banks with certain characteristics in the vicinity may determine the within-firm and across-firm configurations of observable firm-bank connections. (112 words).

DOI
10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2018.07.005
Volume
55
Pages
49-68
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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