The Effects of Formal and Informal Contracting in Credit Availability

Gabriel Jimenez, Vicente Salas‐fumás and Jesús Saurina

Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, 2011, vol. 43, issue 1, 109-132

Abstract: This paper investigates how the use of collateral (formal contracting), along with the market power of banks (which facilitates relational contracts), affects the availability of credit for business firms. Using loan data from the Spanish Credit Register, we show that the average credit quality of borrowers in a provincial market decreases with market concentration and the availability of collateral. Additionally, the marginal effect of each variable decreases with the higher values of the other variable. We also find that credit line interest rates increase with the availability of collateral, although the increase is lower for banks operating in more concentrated credit markets. Therefore, market power (relations) and collateral (formal contracting) act as substitutes to increase the availability of bank finance under asymmetric information.

Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1538-4616.2010.00367.x

Related works:
Journal Article: The Effects of Formal and Informal Contracting in Credit Availability (2011)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:jmoncb:v:43:y:2011:i:1:p:109-132

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Money, Credit and Banking is currently edited by Robert deYoung, Paul Evans, Pok-Sang Lam and Kenneth D. West

More articles in Journal of Money, Credit and Banking from Blackwell Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().