Article (Journal/Review)
Financial constraints of private firms and bank lending behavior
Fecha
2013-09Registro en:
1350-5076 / 1461-7307
10.1016/j.jbankfin.2013.05.018
000322428600013
Autor
Behr, Patrick Gottfried
Norden, Lars
Noth, Felix
Institución
Resumen
We investigate whether and how financial constraints of private firms depend on bank lending behavior. Bank lending behavior, especially its scale, scope and timing, is largely driven by bank business models which differ between privately owned and state-owned banks. Using a unique dataset on private small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) we find that an increase in relative borrowings from local state-owned banks significantly reduces firms' financial constraints, while there is no such effect for privately owned banks. Improved credit availability and private information production are the main channels that explain our result. We also show that the lending behavior of local state-owned banks can be sustainable because it is less cyclical and neither leads to more risk taking nor underperformance. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.