We examine the effect of relationship lending on a firm's cash-holding levels. Relationship lending allows lenders to generate private information about borrowers which mitigates their financial constraints. We find that cash-holding levels for firms with a relationship lender are significantly...

We study how relationships between firms and banks evolved between during the Twentieth century in Britain. We document and explain a remarkable transition from single to multiple firm-bank relationships during the last twenty years of the sample period. Larger, global, or transparent companies...

Using a proprietary database from a large Chinese state-owned bank, we examine whether information evolved from banking relationships predicts commercial loan default by industrial firms. We find that the bank's relationship information is significantly linked to the incidence of default, and...

This paper analyzes the effect of unpredictable aggregate shocks on loan demand and access to credit by combining client-level information from an Ecuadorian microfinance institution with geophysical data on natural disasters, more specifically volcanic eruptions. The results of this 'natural...

Credit availability from different sources varies greatly across firms and has firm-level effects on investment decisions and aggregate effects on output. We develop a theoretical framework in which firms decide endogenously at the extensive and intensive margins of different funding sources to...

This is the first study which analyzes the effect of relationship lending on accounting conservatism for private firms, and how this affects corporate finance. Based on a database containing the financial accounting data of approx. 8,600 private German firms, we first show that relationship...

We formulate and test hypotheses about the role of bank type – small versus large, single-market versus multimarket, and local versus nonlocal banks – in banking relationships. The conventional paradigm suggests that "community banks" – small, single market, local institutions – are...

Conventional wisdom holds that small banks have comparative advantages vis-à-vis large banks in serving small firms, while recent literature suggests this may not be the case. Using a panel of recent US start-ups, we investigate how small bank presence affects these firms in normal times...

We argue that the focus of community banks on relationship lending to small businesses combined with their relatively simple organizational structure allowed them to respond faster to Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan requests than larger banks. Consistent with this argument we find,...