Recent empirical findings by (Elsas, 2005) and (Degryse and Ongena, 2007) document a U-shaped effect of market concentration on relationship lending which cannot be easily accommodated by the investment and strategic theories of bank lending orientation. In this paper, we suggest that this...

Using detailed data on loan applications and decisions for a large sample of manufacturing firms in Italy during the recent financial crisis, we find that the credit crunch has been harsher in provinces with a large share of branches owned by distantly managed banks. Inconsistent with a flight...

In the wake of the global crisis the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has increased its exposure to developing countries and modified its lending approach to enhance its crisis prevention role. In this paper we examine whether, during the current crisis, IMF lending was actually directed at...

Bank deregulation and progress in information technology altered the geographical diffusion of banking structures and instruments, and reduced operational distance between banks and local economies. Although, the consolidation of the banking industry promoted the geographical concentration of...

In the early 1990s, a widely shared opinion among scholars and practitioners was that the importance of physical proximity between banks and borrowers would be doomed to decrease drastically over time and, put in extreme terms, the end of banking geography would become a real possibility....