Using 30,466 bank loans originated during 1990-2006, we examine why firms switch to new banks for their repeat loans. Employing a variety of measures to proxy for firm-level asymmetric information, we find a non-monotonic relationship between the extent of information asymmetry and a firm's...

We study the effects of the interplay between banking deregulation and corporate governance on the lending behavior of savings banks in Spain. The removal of branching barriers that constrained these banks has led to a nationwide expansion, increasing the number of their branches and their...

We offer a new paradigm for understanding the impact of financial shocks on the flow of credit to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Drawing from research on the lending view of monetary policy and research on SME financial contracting, we introduce the concept of glending channels.h A...

We jointly analyze the static, selection, and dynamic effects of domestic, foreign, and state ownership on bank performance. We argue that it is important to include indicators of all the relevant governance effects in the same model. quot;Nonrobustnessquot; checks (which purposely exclude some...

Large and foreign-owned institutions may have difficulty extending relationship loans to informationally opaque small firms. Bank distress does not appear to affect small business lending, although even small firms may react to bank distress by borrowing from multiple banks.Consolidation of the...

Stylized facts suggest that bank lending behavior is highly procyclical. We test a new hypothesis that may help explain why this occurs. The institutional memory hypothesis is driven by deterioration in the ability of loan officers over the bank's lending cycle that results in an easing of...

Market size structure refers to the distribution of shares of different size classes of local market participants, where the sizes are inclusive of assets both within and outside the local market. We apply this new measure of market structure in two empirical analyses of the U.S. banking...

This paper models the inner workings of relationship lending, the implications for bank organizational structure, and the effects of shocks to the economic environment on the availability of relationship credit to small businesses. Relationship lending depends on the accumulation over time by...

We address the causes, consequences, and implications of the cross-border consolidation of financial institutions by reviewing several hundred studies, providing comparative international data, and estimating cross-border banking efficiency in France, Germany, Spain, the U.K., and the U.S....

We examine the economics of financing small business in private equity and debt markets. Firms are viewed through a financial growth cycle paradigm in which different capital structures are optimal at different points in the cycle. We show the sources of small business finance, and how capital...