This paper studies the impact of bank mergers on firm-bank lending relationships using information from individual loan contracts in Belgium. We analyse the effects of bank mergers on the probability of borrowers maintaining their lending relationships and on their ability to continue tapping bank credit. The Belgian financial environment reflects a number of interesting features: high banking ...

While the concept of customer lending relationships in banking has generated a great deal of recent attention, one gap in the empirical literature is that linking current lending business and the sale of “other products”. Specifically, does establishing a lending relationship today add value for the bank by increasing the probability of attracting future business from the same customer? Indeed,...

Abstract The collapse of long-term lending relationships amplified the Great Depression. We demonstrate this by developing a new measure that can be calculated from widely available data at any level aggregation. Our approach exploits differences in responsiveness loan rates to bank funding costs and is supported historical evidence theoretical arguments. reveals marginal impact suspensions on ...

This paper examines the association between bank debt maturity and relationship lending using a unique survey sample of 3,366 SMEs from 19 European countries. The knowledge of how the institutional environment shapes relationship lending helps us to understand how current institutional changes, such as Basel II, might affect the SME-bank relationship and hence, SME access to financing. Our resu...

This paper studies the real effects of relationship lending on firm activity in Italy following Lehman Brothers’ default shock and Europe's sovereign debt crisis, two different crisis situations where latter, bank solvency was at centre economic while being more peripheral former. We use a large data set that merges comprehensive Italian Credit Firm Registers. find Lehman's default, banks offer...

Increasingly, policymakers look to the small business sector as a potential engine of economic growth. Policies to promote small businesses include tax relief, direct subsidies, and indirect subsidies through government lending programs. Encouraging lending to small business is the primary policy objective of the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) loan-guarantee program. Using a panel data s...

The term online peer-to-peer lending (P2P) describes the loan origination process between private individuals on online platforms were financial institutions operate only as intermediates required by law. Initialized by groups in online social networks, first commercial online P2P lending platforms started in 2005. Thus online P2P lending is a relatively young research field. This paper gives a...

Much of the existing literature in small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) finance surveys the impact of borrower and lender characteristics on firms’ credit availability, and it has already been established that there is a positive link between the strength of firm-bank relationship and the level of credit availability. In this paper, I focus on what determines the strength of relationship, me...