Is banking competition beneficial to SMEs? An empirical study based on Italian data

Using a large panel of Italian firms, spanning the years from 1995 to 2003, this study investigates the relationship between bank debt and non-financial SMEs’ performance, evaluating whether and to what extent this link is affected by the degree of competition characterising the local credit market where firms operate. Controlling for inertia, unobserved heterogeneity and the endogeneity of some performance determinants, we find that the (negative) impact of bank debt on firms’ performance is weaker for firms running in more competitive banking markets. We interpret this result as evidence that a more intense banking competition may lead to better credit conditions for small and medium-sized firms.     

市场竞争、银行信贷与上市公司商业信用

商业信用是企业特别是受到信贷约束的中小私有企业获得外部融资的一种重要方式。利用2004—2008年中国制造业上市公司数据,分析市场竞争与银行贷款对上市公司商业信用的影响。结果显示:市场竞争和应收账款正相关,和应付账款负相关;随着银行贷款的增加,企业的应收和应付账款都有所增加。     

Interstate banking,bank consolidation,and bank lending to small business

Proponents and critics of interstate banking argue over the implications of nationwide banking for bank lending to small business. This study explores the patterns of (1) bank consolidation at the national level and (2) the share of domestic-bank commercial lending extended to small firms, specifically, small manufacturing firms, over the period 1976–90. The evidence indicates that despite the trend toward fewer banking organizations and increased aggregate bank concentration due largely to cross-state expansion by superregional banking organizations, no significant downtrend is observed in the share of domestic-bank credit extended to small manufacturing firms. Nor is there any discernible downtrend in banks' share of borrowing by small manufacturing firms. These results are consistent with the thesis that banking industry consolidation hasnot led to a reduction in the supply of bank credit to small firms, at least within the manufacturing sector.     

Banking sector reforms and corporate leverage in emerging markets

Using a large panel of non-financial firms in emerging markets, we study the relation between detailed measures of banking sector reforms and corporate leverage. We find that banking sector reforms are associated with lower corporate debt in emerging market firms, consistent with the notion that these reforms improve banks' risk management and result in tighter lending standards, leading firms to use less bank debt in their capital structure. These effects are less pronounced for financially constrained firms, suggesting a relative increase in the supply of bank credit to firms which were rationed prior to the banking sector reforms.     

“Lending by example”: Direct and indirect effects of foreign banks in emerging markets

Using a novel dataset that allows us to trace the bank relationships of a sample of mostly unlisted firms, we explore which borrowers are able to benefit from foreign bank presence in emerging markets. Our results suggest that the limits to financial integration are less tight than the static picture of firm-bank relationships implies. Even though foreign banks are more likely to engage large and foreign-owned firms, after an acquisition, a bank is 20% less likely to terminate a relationship with a firm if the acquirer is foreign rather than domestic. Most importantly, within a credit market, firms appear to have the same access to financial loans and ability to invest whether they borrow from a foreign bank or not, while foreign banks benefit all firms by indirectly enhancing credit access.     

Who should practice price discrimination using rebates in an asymmetric duopoly?

Price discrimination is generally thought to improve firm profits by allowing firms to extract more consumer surplus. In competition, however, price discrimination may also be costly to the firm because restrictive incentive compatibility conditions may allow the competing firm to gain market share at the discriminating firm’s expense. Therefore, with asymmetric competition, it may be the case that one firm would let the other firm assume the burden of price discrimination. We investigate optimal segmentation in a market with two asymmetric firms and two heterogeneous consumer segments that differ in the importance of price and product attributes. In particular, we investigate second-degree price discrimination under competition with explicit incentive compatibility constraints thus extending prior work in marketing and economics. Focusing on the managerial implications, we explore whether it would be profitable for either or both firms to pursue a segmentation strategy using rebates as a mechanism. We identify conditions under which one or both firms would want to pursue such segmentation. We find that segmentation lessens competition for the less price-sensitive consumer segment and that this results in higher profits to both firms. A key to understanding this result is that segmentation leads to consumer remixing. We establish the key result that if firms are asymmetric in their attractiveness to consumers, the disadvantaged firm in our model is more likely to pursue a segmentation strategy than its rival in equilibrium. We then ask whether this result prevails in practice. To this end, we explore competitive segmentation empirically and are able to verify that disadvantaged firms indeed pursue segmentation through rebates with greater likelihood.     

美国放松银行业地域管制与中小企业贷款

美国放松银行业地域管制后出现大规模的银行并购,但银行业的并购和跨区域扩张并没有使美国银行业市场过度集中和对中小企业贷款造成明显冲击。中国银行业可以从中得到有益启示:放开中小银行跨区域限制的同时必须保证足够数量的中小银行业机构,使银行市场保持适度的竞争;中小银行应更多立足本地,积极发挥对中小企业关系型贷款优势;大型银行发展中小企业贷款必须进行贷款技术创新,以降低对中小企业交易型贷款成本。     

Number of creditors and the real effects of credit supply disruptions

This paper examines the role of bank-firm relationships in transmitting credit supply shocks to the real side of the economy in an emerging market. Using a hand-collected dataset for Iranian public companies, we exploit firms' exposure to a bank involved in a massive Ponzi scheme in 2011. We document a nearly 8 percentage point drop in annual employment growth rate for firms connected to the troubled bank following the credit dry-up caused by the scandal. We show that the magnitude of the effect on employment and investment is amplified by bank-firm relationship at least as much as by the financial constraint status found in previous studies. The results highlight the role of bank-firm relationships and the importance of access to multiple creditors in alleviating the consequences of credit supply disruptions.     

A theory of the currency denomination of international trade

The currency denomination of international trade has significant macroeconomic and policy implications. In this paper we solve for the optimal invoicing choice by integrating this microeconomic decision at the level of the firm into a general equilibrium open economy model. Strategic interactions between firms play a critical role. We find that the less competition firms face in foreign markets, as reflected in market share and product differentiation, the more likely they will price in their own currency. We also show that when a set of countries forms a monetary union, the new currency is likely to be used more extensively in trade than the sum of the currencies it replaces.     

Security Markets versus Bank Finance: Legal Enforcement and Investors' Protection

When minority investors’ rights are poorly protected, the ability of firms to raise equity capital is impaired, leading to less finance for new ventures. Fewer firms will be financed with outside equity, resulting in a low market capitalization relative to GNP. External funding requires easily enforceable claims such as debt or requires long‐term relationships with institutions. Provision of funding shifts from risk capital to debt, and to a predominance of intermediated over market finance. We report supporting evidence for a few countries. To measure investor protection, we use a price measure, the premium on voting stock, related to the control premium. In countries where the voting premium is large, corporate financing is dominated by bank lending and equity markets are much smaller.     

Optimal Timing of Advertising with Demand Spillovers

We construct a model of a horizontally differentiated duopoly with demand spillovers in which advertising influences the willingness-to-pay of consumers for products and thereby affects not only market share, but also the level of market demand. Furthermore, firms decide the timing as well as the level of advertising. We first derive a subgame perfect Nash equilibrium and Stackelberg equilibria in the advertising competition. Then, using the framework of an endogenous timing decision game with an observable delay (i.e., Hamilton and Slutsky, Games Econ Behavior 2: 29–46, 1990), we consider the optimal timing of advertising. We demonstrate that the optimal timing depends on the degree of demand spillovers and the product substitutability. In particular, if there are sufficient asymmetric demand spillovers between firms, there is a unique Stackelberg equilibrium in the advertising competition, in which the firm providing the product with small (large) demand spillovers chooses to invest in advertising early (late), regardless of the mode of competition.     

The trade credit channel revisited: evidence from micro data of Japanese small firms

It is suggested that trade credit can be a substitute for bank loans for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that have little access to external funding sources. Using unique cross-sectional survey data of Japanese SMEs, we conduct a deep investigation into the substitutability between bank loans and trade credit. This survey contains rich information on the suppliers of trade credit to SMEs, thus enabling the examination of the channel through which credit is provided from suppliers to customers. We find that SMEs with little access to bank credit depend more on large suppliers for trade credit. We also find that when a purchase is made from a large supplier, more credit is indeed provided in the form of trade credit. Furthermore, this channel of credit from large suppliers to SMEs is only observed for solvent customers, not for insolvent customers. Our findings suggest that trade credit plays an important role for entrepreneurial firms over the financial growth cycle. For young and small firms with little access to bank loans trade credit is an important funding source.     

Input Pricing and Market Share Delegation in a Vertically Related Market: Is the Timing Order Relevant?

This paper adds to the literature on the strategic use of managers’ contracts in competition by examining whether market‐share delegation, in which managers receive rewards based on a combination of profits and market share, and the order of moves affect input pricing in a vertically related market. It shows that: (i) input pricing is not affected by delegation form and the order of moves between upstream and downstream firms under quantity competition; (ii) downstream firms obtain the same profit as in the simple Nash equilibrium regardless of delegation forms in a delegation–input price–quantity competition game; and (iii) the upstream monopolist will set input price beforehand regardless of the delegation form. Since the outcomes in our model create higher quantity and lower price in a Cournot product market, it lessens the double‐marginalization problem in such a vertically separated industry.     

The impact of credit constraints on exporting firms: Evidence from the provision and subsequent removal of subsidised credit

We study the causal impact of credit constraints on exporters using a natural experiment provided by two policy changes in India, first in 1998 which made small‐scale firms eligible for subsidised direct credit, and a subsequent reversal in policy in 2000 wherein some of these firms lost their eligibility. Using firms that were not affected by these policy changes as our control group in each case, we find that credit expansion increased the growth rate of bank borrowing and had a positive effect on exports. The subsequent policy reversal in 2000 had no impact on the growth rate of bank borrowing or on exports.     

Small Firm Financing in Sweden, 1960–95

This article analyses the financial environment facing small firms in Sweden, 1960–95. The Swedish approach to small firms makes no clear distinction between the functions of non-market and market organisations or between private and public lenders. Their typical financial contracts are essentially similar: open-ended and based on commercial considerations. The long-standing commitment which is observed from both types of creditors implies a continuous exchange of information, carried in the form of regional business networks. The two types of organisations share risks in the financing of new projects, and the role of bank credit as a signal when applying for public credit reinforces the perception of a business network in which private and public organisations collaborate. This stresses the importance of analysing venture capitalists as an entity rather than as isolated actors. A triad relationship between firms, public and private lenders distinguishes the Swedish case. The mixture of state-based and market-based finance has a long tradition related to the Swedish model of a mixed economy.     

Services trade and credit frictions: Evidence with matched bank–firm data

The effects of credit supply shocks on the exports of services are not clear a priori. On the one hand, services need lower initial investment in physical capital than manufacturing. On the other hand, competitiveness for exporting services requires investments in intangible capital and in product customisation that may be subject to credit frictions. Using Italian matched bank–firm data and focusing on the sovereign debt crisis, we find an elasticity of services exports to credit supply, between 0.3 and 0.4. The effects of credit shocks are especially relevant for firms exporting complex services to countries with weaker institutions and for services that are not the main product of the firms. Overall, our results suggest that credit supply plays a relevant role for exporting services during crises.     

Credit risk and bank competition in Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper investigates the relationship between bank competition and stability in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using financial statements on 221 banks from 33 countries over the period 2000–15, we provide evidence for a U-shaped relationship between bank competition and credit risk. Up to a certain threshold, higher levels of bank competition are associated with lower credit risk. Above this threshold, more competition increases credit risks as the positive effects of competition are outweighed by the adverse effects of rising competition. The optimal threshold appears to be higher for African banks compared to banks from developed countries. We also find that credit risk in Sub-Saharan Africa is not only related to macroeconomic determinants, such as growth, public debt, economic concentration and financial development, but also to the business and regulatory environment. In particular, bank risks appear to be lower in countries where credit registry coverage is higher and the tenure of supervisors is shorter.     

Trade Credit,Bank Credit,and Flight to Quality: Evidence from French SMEs

This paper investigates the impact of the global financial crisis on the allocation of credit to small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). Using samples of French SMEs from four industries, we found support for the prediction of the flight‐to‐quality hypothesis that in bad times, credit flows away from smaller constrained firms to larger, higher grade firms. We also examined the relation between bank credit and trade credit in terms of two hypotheses: the substitution hypothesis and the complementary hypothesis. The results of fixed effects panel regressions showed that trade credit for small firms during periods of tight money acts generally as complement rather than substitute to bank credit, thus providing empirical support for the redistribution view of trade credit.     

Funding Gaps? Access To Bank Loans By High-Tech Start-Ups

This paper aims to shed new light on start-up financing of new technology-based firms (NTBFs) and the existence of credit constraints that may negatively affect their activity. For this purpose, we analyze the different sources of start-up financing used by NTBFs and investigate several characteristics that may influence the extent of recourse to bank loans. In the empirical section, we consider a sample composed of 386 Italian NTBFs that operate both in manufacturing and services. We estimate double-censored tobit and bivariate tobit models so as to highlight the determinants of (i) the financial leverage, measured by the ratio of bank debt to total capital, and (ii) the amounts of personal capital and bank loans of firms at start-up, respectively. Our findings support the view that the credit market is imperfect and there exists a financing hierarchy. In fact, only a minority of firms resorts to outside financing, and especially to bank debt. In addition, the level of financial leverage is not random; it increases with an increase of the predicted amount of firms’ total initial capital, while it decreases with variables such as the number of owners and the work experience of founders that are indicative of greater personal wealth available to finance firms’ start-up. Lastly, the size of the bank loans obtained by firms generally is small and it is quite insensitive to demand-side factors that instead determine the amount of personal and total capital, with the notable exception of scale economies in the industry of the start-up. In other words, in accordance with the argument that credit to NTBFs is rationed, the loan supply curve is highly inelastic, even though not perfectly so.     

Horizontal Agreements and R&D Complementarities: Merger versus RJV

We study the decision of two firms within an oligopoly concerning whether to enter into a horizontal agreement to exploit complementarities between their R&D activities and if so, whether to merge or form a research joint venture (RJV). In contrast to horizontal merger and motivated by real-world evidence, we incorporate a probability that an RJV contract will fail to enforce R&D sharing. We find that a horizontal agreement always arises in equilibrium, which is consistent with empirical findings that R&D complementarities between firms positively influence the formation of horizontal agreements. The insiders’ merger/RJV choice involves a trade-off: While merger offers certainty that R&D complementarities will be exploited, it leads to a profit-reducing reaction by outsiders on the product market, where competition is Cournot. Greater contract enforceability (quality) and R&D investment costs both favour RJV. Interestingly, the insiders may choose to merge even when RJV contracts are always enforceable, and they may opt to form an RJV even when the likelihood of enforceability is negligible. We also explore the welfare implications of the firms’ merger/RJV choice.