No lending relationships and liquidity management of small businesses during a financial shock

We investigate the determinants of the end of lending relationships with banks using small business data. We also investigate how small businesses without lending relationships financed credit demand during the global financial shock. First, we find that firms with lower growth, low working capital, and high internal cash were more likely to end lending relationships with banks. Supply-side effects on the determinants of the end of relationships are insignificant. Second, when firms experienced credit demand during the financial shock, those with lending relationships increased bank borrowings while those without lending relationships reduced internal cash. Third, firm performance (in terms of profitability) was neither lower nor higher for firms that did not have lending relationships with banks during the shock period.     

Balance sheet deterioration and credit allocations: Japanese evidence from the short-term economic survey of enterprises

This study is an empirical attempt to investigate the effects of balance sheet deterioration of Japanese firms and banks in the 1990s on credit allocation using the short-term economic survey of enterprises. This survey contains a unique item: proportion of firms perceiving the lending attitude as severe. After developing a theoretical model to link this item with the balance sheet conditions of borrowers and lenders, we estimate the relationship derived from the model. We find that credit was reduced when the balance sheet of firms and banks deteriorated. The effects are notably large for non-manufacturing industries.     

Bank Lending and Economic Growth of Chinese Cities

Using a city-level dataset over the period 2004-2006,the present study investigates the relationship between bank lending and the economic growth of Chinese cities.Unlike past studies,we divide bank lending into loans from three types of banks:foreign banks,city banks and other banks.Our findings are threefold.First,the lending of foreign banks exhibits a strong and positive association with the economic growth of Chinese cities. Second,foreign direct investment in the sampled cities enhances the lending effects of foreign banks,but reduces the lending effects of other banks on the economy of Chinese cities.Third, the effects of city competitiveness are similar to those of foreign direct investment;that is,city competitiveness augments the lending effects of foreign banks but reduces the lending effects of other banks.     

Bank lending and the business cycle: Does ownership matter in ASEAN countries?

We analyze the lending cyclicality of 213 ASEAN commercial banks over the period 2001–2015. The findings indicate that lending by private banks is procyclical while lending by state banks is countercyclical. Long-term liabilities also move countercyclically for state banks whereas funding for non-state banks in the form of deposit and long-term liabilities is procyclical. Greater lending cyclicality is observed for both private and state banks in Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam (CMLV) compared to Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Singapore (ASEAN-5). Lending of non-ASEAN based foreign banks shows greater procyclicality than that of domestic banks for the ASEAN-5 countries, although not for the CMLV countries. During the global financial crisis, lending by non-ASEAN based foreign banks contracted sharply even as lending by ASEAN based foreign banks was unaffected. Overall, our results confirm that bank ownership influences lending and funding sensitivity to economic fluctuations.     

Bank profitability and the bank lending channel: Evidence from China

This paper uses bank-level data to investigate whether the impact of monetary policy on bank lending depends on the characteristics of Chinese banks during the period 1985–2007. We find that the impact of monetary policy on lending is weaker for larger banks and banks with lower levels of liquidity, and that banks’ responses to monetary policy do not necessarily vary according to their capital. Further, to identify the bank lending channel more clearly, we test whether the impact of monetary policy varies according to profitability. The results show that profitable banks tend to be less sensitive to monetary policy, because when tight monetary policy leads to a fall in deposits, less profitable banks face a higher cost of capital.     

Heterogeneity in lending and sectoral growth: evidence from German bank-level data

This paper investigates whether heterogeneity across firms and banks matters for the impact of domestic sectoral growth on bank lending. We use several bank-level datasets provided by the Deutsche Bundesbank for the 1996–2002 period. Our results show that firm heterogeneity and bank heterogeneity affect how lending responds to domestic sectoral growth. We document that banks’ total lending to German firms reacts pro-cyclically to domestic sectoral growth, while lending exceeding a threshold of €1.5 million to German and foreign firms does not. Moreover, we document that the response of lending depends on bank characteristics such as the banking groups, the banks’ asset size, and the degree of sectoral specialization. We find that total domestic lending by savings banks and credit cooperatives (including their regional institutions), smaller banks, and banks that are highly specialized in specific sectors responds positively and, in relevant cases, more strongly to domestic sectoral growth.

Microdata Evidence on the Bank Lending Channel in the Netherlands

This study contributes to the empirical evidence on the lending channel in the Netherlands using individual bank data. The main conclusion is that a lending channel is operative in the Netherlands. However, it is only operative for unsecured lending and not for secured lending, possibly because loans with government guarantees get special treatment by banks. Effects of monetary tightening on unsecured lending are more negative for smaller, less liquid and less capitalised banks, in line with the lending channel theory. The contribution of this study is that it gives evidence that the monetary policy impact on bank lending also depends on the market segment in which a bank is active. The evidence suggests that the policy impact is weaker on credit to households than it is on lending to firms.     

Monetary policy transmission through the bank lending channel in Thailand

This paper investigates the strength of the bank lending channel in the transmission of monetary policy in Thailand. Bank behavior is captured by quarterly balance sheet data for ten commercial banks of diverse size for the period 2007-2016. Based on a flexible form profit function, bank supply and demand equations are estimated that capture lending and funding choices. The estimation results are used to derive time-dependent supply and demand elasticities which are then combined with estimates of pass-through from the policy rate to retail rates to simulate the dynamic impact of a monetary tightening on bank portfolio allocations. Due to pass-through differentials among retail interest rates, an increase in the policy rate is shown to raise the cost of loan-production relative to the return on loans, thereby motivating banks to contract their lending. Small banks show a greater degree of loan contraction than large banks because large banks are better able to fund continued lending through debt issuance. Because the Thai economy relies heavily on bank loans, these findings suggest that the bank lending channel is an important conduit for the transmission of monetary policy in Thailand.     

Loan interest rate pass-through and changes after the financial crisis: Japan’s evidence

We estimate interest rate pass-through in the loan market using an individual bank-based panel dataset from Japan. Previous studies using data from European countries have presented a number of common findings, including that banks with a high proportion of relationship lending tend to set lower pass-through. In this respect, we have obtained similar results using a dataset for Japan going back to the early 2000s. We further examine the influence of borrowing firms’ balance sheet characteristics on loan interest rate pass-through, and find that these additional factors are also important determinants for pass-through dispersion. However, after the recent global financial crisis, even banks with a high proportion of relationship lending have largely lowered loan interest rates by raising pass-through, and pass-through has not necessarily been determined in accordance with borrowing firms’ balance sheet characteristics. These results differ from those of recent studies on European countries. Possible background factors explaining this change are that (i) pressure to lower loan interest rates has risen due to extensive monetary easing and greater lending competition among banks, while Japan’s banking system as a whole has maintained its resilience in the post-crisis period; (ii) demand for bank loans has increased substantially due to disruptions in the market for alternative funding sources, such as commercial paper and corporate bonds; and (iii) public measures to increase bank loans have been broadly introduced in Japan.     

贷款技术、设立取址与村镇银行小微企业贷款

本文选取东中西部六个省份200家村镇银行作为研究样本,实证分析了村镇银行贷款技术、设立取址与小微企业贷款发放量之间的关系。研究结果表明：（1）经济发达地区村镇银行小微企业贷款发放量明显低于经济欠发达地区;（2）村镇银行在发放小微企业贷款时,更倾向于使用关系型贷款技术。随着地区金融基础设施的完善,村镇银行所使用的贷款技术中交易型贷款技术的比例逐渐增加,且小微企业贷款发放量也呈递增趋势;（3）当主发起人为农村金融机构时,村镇银行的小微企业贷款发放量明显高于主发起人为非农金融机构的村镇银行。因此,为了进一步缓解小微企业融资难,政府应当采取积极措施鼓励村镇银行更多的设立在能发挥其小微企业贷款比较优势的欠发达地区,尤其是当主发起人为农村金融机构时;同时,应当努力完善地区金融基础设施,以方便贷款技术的创新与应用。     

Does “skin in the game” reduce risk taking? Leverage,liability and the long-run consequences of new deal banking reforms

This essay examines how the Banking Acts of the 1933 and 1935 and related New Deal legislation influenced risk taking in the financial sector of the U.S. economy. The analysis focuses on contingent liability of bank owners for losses incurred by their firms and how the elimination of this liability influenced leverage and lending by commercial banks. Using a new panel data set, we find contingent liability reduced risk taking. In states with contingent liability, banks used less leverage and converted each dollar of capital into fewer loans, and thus could survive larger loan losses (as a fraction of their portfolio) than banks in limited liability states. In states with limited liability, banks took on more leverage and risk, particularly in states that required banks with limited liability to join the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. In the long run, the New Deal replaced a regime of contingent liability with deposit insurance, stricter balance sheet regulation, and increased capital requirements, shifting the onus of risk management from bankers to state and federal regulators.     

Some Evidence on the Relevance of Bank Behaviour for the Lending Channel in The Netherlands

This paper studies the behaviour of Dutch banks. We test the adjustment of banks' balance sheets in times of monetary policy changes during the period 1957–1991. As a reaction to a policy change, banks basically have two alternatives to adjust their net money creation: (1) sell securities in public capital markets, and/or issue long-term liabilities, and (2) change domestic loan supply. If banks opt for the latter a lending channel may be relevant, even in a small open economy with a fixed exchange rate and a high degree of international capital mobility. We test for the effectiveness of both indirect and direct instruments of monetary policy. It turns out that in case of changes in the official interest rate, the volume of bank loans is not affected and that banks display a kind of buffer-stock behaviour by diminishing their publicly traded assets. In situations with quantity restrictions on the growth of net money creation, however, the volume of loans is affected significantly when the quantity restriction is withdrawn thereby fulfilling a necessary condition for the bank lending channel to be effective.     

Financial reform and credit extension in Lesotho

The study on which this article is based was concerned with establishing whether the lending behaviour of Lesotho's commercial banks in relation to the private sector has changed following the reforms that have been implemented since 1980. The influence of macroeconomic variables on agricultural credit and on private sector lending provided through the existing commercial banks during the period 1980 to 1993 was examined. The results showed a high and significant association between total credit extension and the general performance of the economy. Macroeconomic variables such as returns on financial securities in Lesotho and bonds in the Republic of South Africa, bank discount rates and the interest rates on saving deposits applicable in Lesotho had a key effect on the extension of credit by commercial banks to the private sector. The study concluded that credit extension activities in Lesotho during the study period were sensitive to the macroeconomic environment.     

Why do commercial banks hold government bonds? The case of Japan

We investigate the determinants of the demand for Japanese government bonds (JGBs) by commercial banks in Japan. In particular, by estimating portfolio equations for JGB demand and bank loans, based on a panel data set from the late 1990s to the 2000s, we rigorously test the popular assertion that the long stagnation of the real economy caused a shift in the portfolios of commercial banks from bank lending to JGBs. We find that the popular assertion is not empirically supported. Rather, the portfolio shift from loans to JGBs has been caused by a fall in the ratio of the loan rate to unit lending costs, or the bank’s price–cost margin for lending.     

Zombie Firms and Debt Accumulation: A Theoretical Framework and Chinese Experience

In recent years, as China has grappled with rising debt and broad economic restructure, the prevalence of zombie firms has become a critical problem. This paper provides a theoretical framework illustrating the rationale behind the occurrence of zombie firms from the perspective of banks. We develop differential equations to model a bank's expectation and the ex ante estimate that underlies its decision to refinance an insolvent borrower. An optimistic expectation is essential in zombie lending and is intrinsic to the countercyclical pattern of zombie firms. Our model also predicts that debt can build up to an unsustainable level if recovery of profitability is sluggish or the initial debt burden is too high. Examining the Chinese experience of zombie firms over 2007–2017, this paper highlights two findings. First, the share of zombie firms among Shanghai and Shenzhen A‐share listed companies demonstrates a countercyclical pattern. Second, the positive correlation between zombie share and debt accumulation across manufacturing sectors sheds light on the link between zombie firms and the rising corporate debt in China. To deal with the “zombie” problem, the government should carefully weigh its policies to avoid further distortions because the occurrence of zombie firms may be inevitable and impossible to eliminate.     

Bank Lending and Business Cycles: South African Evidence

Abstract: The paper provides empirical analysis on the linkage between the behavior of bank lending and business cycles in South Africa. Consistent with theory, overall evidence suggesting pro‐cyclicality of bank lending is uncovered both at macro and micro levels. At macro level, bank lending and lending rates have moved in tandem with business cycles. Real borrowing by government was counter‐cyclical to business cycles as would be expected if the role of government was to fine‐tune the economy during booms and recessions. At micro level, bank lending to households and firms was generally pro‐cyclical. Even the growth of provisioning by banks has been largely pro‐cyclical to business cycles, though exceptions were recorded. First, new mortgage lending exhibited counter‐cyclical behavior before 1993. We attributed this behavior to the political and economic climate prevailing then which created uncertainties that made ownership of property a good hedge against economic and political risks. Secondly, the growth of real credit for investment and of foreign trade finance does not appear to have been related to business cycles.     

Unfinished business: Zombie firms among SME in Japan’s lost decades

The “soft budget problem,” by which banks loosen their lending stances toward long-term client firms despite worsening business conditions, has been widely discussed in the field of financial studies. In Japan, this problem has attracted attention particularly in connection to so-called “zombie firms,” financially weak firms sustained by discounted interest rates and evergreen lending which have become a major research and political interest in recent years. In this article, we focus on zombie firms among small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), a corporate category that has hitherto received less consideration in the discussion about Japan’s zombie firms. We find that: (1) many zombie firms exist among SME and that the zombie firm ratio increases as firm size decreases; and (2) some zombie firms eventually emerge from zombie status among SME. In other words, zombie firms are likely problematic from the view of the efficiency of the industries to which they belong. But when one considers that many zombie firms achieve revival, it would seem inappropriate to uniformly promote their elimination. Since ending zombie status seems to directly imply market exit for many SME, it is important to conduct preliminary screening to prevent the creation of zombie firms in the first place.     

Voting rules and the success of connected lending in 19th century New England banks

How well do decision-making processes within firms serve as control mechanisms? The voting rules governing loan approval in early 19th century New England banks are analyzed to find out. These banks exhibited high levels of lending to directors and their associates. Some theories of corporate governance argue that this could lead to increased managerial opportunism. However, a model shows that banks that require more votes to be won in the loan approval process prevent projects with private gains and social costs. The historical data are consistent with the idea that higher levels of consensus raised the profitability of banks.     

Why do Japanese regional banks issue subordinated debts?

This paper empirically investigates the determinants of subordinated debt issuance by Japanese regional banks during the period of 2000–2007 using a probit model. The empirical results suggest the following. (i) Throughout the period, Japanese regional banks with a lower capital ratio tended to have a higher incentive to issue subordinated debts due possibly to their counting as Tier 2 capital under the Basel Accord. (ii) During the period of banking instability (2000–2003), subordinated debt investors tended to use financial variables such as the non-performing loan ratio, ROA, and ROE to screen good banks. (iii) During the period after the banking system regained stability (2004–2007), investors tended to pay less attention to the above variables due chiefly to the mitigated default risk of these banks.     

Lack of successors,firm default,and the performance of small businesses

We investigate the effects of the lack of successors on small businesses with an elderly manager. Using firm-level data from Japan, a country with an aging population, we find the following results. First, smaller, younger, highly leveraged, and nongrowing firms are likely to have no successor. Second, firms with an elderly manager are more likely to exit and default if they have no successors, and this is particularly the case during the global financial crisis around 2009. This result suggests that these firms have less incentive to repay debts because they are not going concerns. As a result of the high probability of default, the annual change in bank borrowing is low if firms with an elderly manager have no successor. Third, the annual change of bank borrowing is lower for firms with no successor during the crisis and post-crisis periods, implying that banks reduce lending to these firms because of their high risk.