Creditor concentration: An empirical investigation

Most of the literature on multiple banking assumes equal financing shares. However, unequal, asymmetric or concentrated bank borrowing is widespread, and creditor concentration is only weakly correlated with the number of bank relationships. This paper therefore investigates the determinants of creditor concentration for German firms using a comprehensive firm-bank level dataset for the time period between 1993 and 2003. We document that corporate borrowing from banks is very often concentrated, even for the largest firms in our sample. Leveraged firms and firms with more redeployable assets concentrate their borrowing from banks, as are firms dealing with a relationship lender that is profitable, that has lower monitoring costs, or that operates in a concentrated regional lending market.     

Does banking competition alleviate or worsen credit constraints faced by small- and medium-sized enterprises? Evidence from China

Banking competition may enhance or hinder the financing of small and medium-sized enterprises. Using a survey on the financing of such enterprises in China, combined with detailed bank branch information, we investigate how concentration in local banking market affects the availability of credit. We find that lower market concentration alleviates financing constraints. The widespread presence of joint-stock banks has a larger effect on alleviating these constraints, than the presence of city commercial banks, while the presence of state-owned banks has a smaller effect.     

Evaluation of the convergence between “self-reporters” and “proxies” in a disability questionnaire by means of behaviour coding method

Household surveys often require including proxy reporters to obtain information about other household members who cannot be interviewed. The participation of proxies can undermine survey data quality due to the fact that proxies must respond to questions thinking about other people. The objectives of the present study were to analyze the behaviour of proxy reporters and evaluate the convergence between the answers given by proxies and self-reporters by means of behaviour coding. This improves the evaluation of convergence, since only adequate (i.e., interpretable) answers given by both types of informant are taken into account. Responses to a disability questionnaire employed by an official statistical institute were analyzed. The questionnaire includes 11 questions about different limitations related to everyday activities. 16 self-reporter and 16 proxies formed 16 couples whose members lived together and supported a direct family relation. The results show a high percentage (52%) of convergence between both types of informant, although fluctuating across the questions and the couples. Proxies showed relatively more adequate behaviour during the interaction than self-reporters. From this we conclude that proxies can be considered at least as good informants as self-reporters from an interviewer-respondent interaction perspective. Future research should address the impact of proxy responses on survey validity.     

Inter-industry FDI spillovers from foreign banks: Evidence in transition economies

Using a sample of nonfinancial domestic firms in transition economies from Eastern Europe and Central Asia, we examine whether and how inter-industry spillover from foreign direct investment in the banking sector occurs. Our findings show that the innovation pursued by domestic firms benefits from foreign bank penetration. However, these positive inter-industry spillovers surprisingly do not seem to work through enhanced credit access. We further find these positive spillovers to occur mainly for foreign banks that use relationship lending, domestic firms that do not export, and host countries that are less open to the global market.