Financial constraints are frictions that prevent firms from funding all desired investments, which might affect firm value and aggregate economic activity. We investigate whether and how bank governance, especially private vs. non-private bank ownership, affects financial constraints of small...

This paper investigates the impact of IT standardization on bank performance based on apanel of 457 German savings banks over the period from 1996 to 2006. We measure ITstandardization as the fraction of IT expenses for centralized services over banks' total ITexpenses. Bank efficiency, in turn,...

Competitive shocks can erode the customer base and thus the information pool of banks. Inferiorinformation quality also reduces the quality of borrowers and may lead to financial instability ofbanks and corporates if risk taking is excessive. Recent theories conjecture that banks can mitigatethe...

Information management is a core process in banking, in particular when lending to small, opaquefirms. But while a more intensive use of information technology (IT) can enhance informationmanagement, it is also costly. Merely increasing IT expenditure may thus not be a panacea tooptimize...