This study analyzes common stock return behavior around the announcement date of a bank loan commitment to a firm. The results demonstrate that loan commitments are viewed as positive when the more formal revolving credit agreement is used. Straight lines of credit do not show any significant reaction. Loan commitment announcements are associated with signals transmitted by banks and is an impl...

Lending officers (LOs) assess loan applications under conditions characterized by shifts in economic climate, wavering public credibility for banks and greater industry regulation. This paper examines the extent to which, in such an economic environment, the LOs’ assessment of commercial loan applications may be defensive, and, if so, which mechanisms that may trigger defensive loan assessment ...

Agriculture plays a crucial role in the development of the Indian economy. It accounts for about 19 percent of GDP and about two thirds of the population is dependent on the sector. (Economic Survey, 2009). Recognizing the importance of agriculture sector in India’s development, the Government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) have played a vital role in creating a broad-based institutional f...

Countrywide Loan Underwriting Expert System (CLUEZP) is an advanced, automated mortgage underwriting rule-based expert system. The system was developed to increase the production capacity and productivity of Countrywide branches, improve the consistency of underwriting, and reduce the cost of originating a loan. The system receives selected information from the loan application, credit report, ...

To sustain growth in an aging economy, it is important to ease the financing of small firms by bank loans. Using bank internal data of small business loans in Germany, we examine the determinants of loan rates in the period 1995-2010. Beyond characteristics of the firm, the loan contract, and the lending relationship, demographic aspects matter. However, collateral and relationship lending play...

In this paper, we analyze whether the total debt ratios and bank loan ratios of Chinese listed companies had any impact on their fixed investment in 2001-2006, and whether this impact, if it existed, differed among companies with differing investment opportunities. Our results are as follows. First, our analysis reveals that the total debt ratio (bank loan ratio) did have a negative impact on f...

We examine the implications of optimal credit risk transfer (CRT) for bank-loan monitoring, and the incentives for banks to engage in optimal CRT. In our model, properly designed CRT instruments allow banks to insure themselves against loan losses precisely in those states that signal monitoring. We find that optimal CRT enhances loan monitoring and expands financial intermediation, in contrast...

This paper studies a largely overlooked and important segment of the mortgage market in explaining the recent financial crisis—the condominium loan market, which experienced a 15fold increase in origination and constituted 15% of the overall residential loan originations from 2001 to 2007. Condominium loan defaults grow at a faster rate than single family (including subprime) loan defaults. Con...

Banks face a tradeoff between diversifying and focusing their loan portfolio. In this paper we carry out an empirical study for the German market to shed light on the question whether or not the benefits of risk sharing outweigh those of specialization. We use data from the Bundesbank’s quarterly borrowers statistic to determine the degree of diversification in the banks’ loan portfolios and co...