When Broadband Comes to Banks: Credit Supply, Market Structure, and Information Acquisition

Angelo D'Andrea, Marco Pelosi and Enrico Sette

No 19033, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: This paper studies how broadband internet affects bank credit supply to non-financial firms. We rely on loan-level data from the Italian Credit Register and quasi-experimental variation in the diffusion of broadband. Our estimates include firm-time fixed effects to control for the effect of broadband on firm demand. We find that branches in municipalities reached by fast internet increase loan supply and reduce interest rates. The credit expansion results from higher branch productivity, wider geographical reach, and lower local market concentration. Branches connected to fast internet acquire more information on borrowers after loan origination, which is used to improve monitoring.

Keywords: Banks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-04
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP19033 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

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:cpr:ceprdp:19033

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP19033

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().