1 Introduction -- 2 Theory and Hypotheses: The Effects of Using Soft Information on a Lender’s Performance, Specifically in Interbank Competition -- 3 Survey Data from Japanese Regional Banks and Using Soft Information in Lending Decisions -- 4 The Influence of Using Soft Information on Lender...

Motivated by the recent discussion of the declining importance of deposits as banks' major source of funding we investigate which factors determine funding costs at local banks. Using a panel data set of more than 800 German local savings and cooperative banks for the period from 1998 to 2004 we...