Private information and lender discretion across time and institutions

Gene Ambrocio and Iftekhar Hasan ()

No 17/2018, Research Discussion Papers from Bank of Finland

Abstract: We assess the extent to which discretion, unexplained variations in the terms of a loan contract, has varied across time and lending institutions and show that part of this discretion is due to private information that lenders have on their borrowers. We find that discretion is lower for secured loans and loans granted by a larger group of lenders, and is larger when the lenders are larger and more profitable. Over time, discretion is also lower around recessions although the private information content is higher. The results suggest that bank discretionary and private information acquisition behaviour may be important features of the credit cycle.

JEL-codes: D82 G14 G21 G28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban
Date: 2018-10-10
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: Track citations by RSS feed

Published in Published in Journal of Banking and Finance (Vol 106, September, 2019) as What drives discretion in bank lending? Some evidence and a link to private information

Downloads: (external link)
https://helda.helsinki.fi/bof/bitstream/123456789/15922/1/BoF_DP_1817.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:bof:bofrdp:2018_017

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Research Discussion Papers from Bank of Finland Bank of Finland, P.O. Box 160, FI-00101 Helsinki, Finland. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Minna Nyman ().