In this paper we build a unique dataset to study how banks decide which firms to lend to and how this decision depends on their own situation and the characteristics of their borrowers. We find that weaker capitalised banks adjust their credit standards more than healthier banks, especially for...

Applying the identification strategy employed by Driscoll (2004) for the United States, this paper provides empirical evidence for the existence of a bank lending channel of monetary policy transmission in the euro area. In addition, and in contrast to recent findings for the US, we find that in...

Using business survey data on German manufacturing firms, this paper provides tests for hypotheses formulated in capital market imperfection theories that predict distributional effects in the transmission mechanism of monetary policy. Effects of monetary policy shocks on the business conditions...

A crucial condition for the existence of a credit channel through bank loans is that monetary policy should be able to change bank loan supply. This paper contributes to the discussion on this issue by presenting empirical evidence from dynamic panel estimations based on a dataset that comprises...

This study contributes to the empirical evidence on the lending channel in the Netherlands using individual bank data. The main conclusion is that a lending channel is operative in the Netherlands. However, it is only operative for unsecured and not for secured lending, possibly because loans...

This paper analyses empirically the role of bank lending in monetary policy transmission on the basis of Greek bank level data. Two approaches have been taken. One employing a reduced form equation linking monetary policy and distributional variables to bank loans in the spirit of Kashyap and...

This paper offers a comprehensive comparison of the structure of banking and financial markets in the euro area. Based on this, several hypotheses about the role of banks in monetary policy transmission are developed. Many of the predictions that have been proposed for the U.S. are deemed...

We examine the euro area monetary policy transmission process using post-1999 data, with two main questions in mind: has it changed after ­ and because of ­ EMU and, if so, is it becoming homogeneous across countries. Given the data limitations, we concentrate on three blocks of transmission:...

We revisit recent evidence on how monetary policy affects output and prices in the U.S. and in the euro area. The response patterns to a shift in monetary policy are similar in most respects, but differ noticeably as to the composition of output changes. In the euro area investment is the...

An important stylized fact to emerge from the VAR estimates is that exogenous monetary policy shocks (also labelled unsystematic monetary policy) have a delayed, persistent, hump shaped effect on inflation. I argue that this empirical pattern is fragile. In particular it disappears when one...