IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbfina/v37y2013i5p1372-1385.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Relationship lending, hierarchical distance and credit tightening: Evidence from the financial crisis

Author

Listed:
  • Cotugno, Matteo
  • Monferrà, Stefano
  • Sampagnaro, Gabriele

Abstract

This paper examines the firms’ credit availability during the 2007–2009 financial crisis using a dataset of 5331 bank–firm relationships provided by borrowers’ credit folders of three Italian banks. It aims to test whether a strong lender–borrower relationship can produce less credit rationing for borrowing firms even during a credit crunch period. The results show that exclusivity of the relationship can mitigate the firm credit rationing. We also verify the influence of lending organizational structure during crisis. A new measure of distance in lending technologies has been introduced: the hierarchical distance calculated as the distance between the branch that originates the loan and the location of the hierarchical level responsible for financing decision. Our findings document a negative impact of distance on credit availability, consistent with the idea that proximity facilitates the transmission of soft information.

Suggested Citation

  • Cotugno, Matteo & Monferrà, Stefano & Sampagnaro, Gabriele, 2013. "Relationship lending, hierarchical distance and credit tightening: Evidence from the financial crisis," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(5), pages 1372-1385.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:37:y:2013:i:5:p:1372-1385
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jbankfin.2012.07.026
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378426612002208
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jbankfin.2012.07.026?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hans Degryse & Steven Ongena, 2005. "Distance, Lending Relationships, and Competition," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(1), pages 231-266, February.
    2. Stefania De Mitri & Giorgio Gobbi & Enrico Sette, 2010. "Relationship lending in a financial turmoil," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 772, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    3. Elsas, Ralf & Krahnen, Jan Pieter, 1998. "Is relationship lending special? Evidence from credit-file data in Germany," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 22(10-11), pages 1283-1316, October.
    4. Roberto Felici & Marcello Pagnini, 2008. "Distance, Bank Heterogeneity And Entry In Local Banking Markets," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(3), pages 500-534, September.
    5. Berger, Allen N. & Espinosa-Vega, Marco A. & Frame, W. Scott & Miller, Nathan H., 2011. "Why do borrowers pledge collateral? New empirical evidence on the role of asymmetric information," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 55-70, January.
    6. Aghion, Philippe & Tirole, Jean, 1997. "Formal and Real Authority in Organizations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(1), pages 1-29, February.
    7. Degryse, Hans & Van Cayseele, Patrick, 2000. "Relationship Lending within a Bank-Based System: Evidence from European Small Business Data," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 90-109, January.
    8. Jiménez, Gabriel & Salas, Vicente & Saurina, Jesús, 2009. "Organizational distance and use of collateral for business loans," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 234-243, February.
    9. Berger, Allen N. & Miller, Nathan H. & Petersen, Mitchell A. & Rajan, Raghuram G. & Stein, Jeremy C., 2005. "Does function follow organizational form? Evidence from the lending practices of large and small banks," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 237-269, May.
    10. Ferri, Giovanni & Tae Soo Kang & In-June Kim, 2001. "The value of relationship banking during financial crises : evidence from the Republic of Korea," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2553, The World Bank.
    11. Berger, Allen N. & Udell, Gregory F., 2006. "A more complete conceptual framework for SME finance," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(11), pages 2945-2966, November.
    12. Berger, Allen N & Udell, Gregory F, 1995. "Relationship Lending and Lines of Credit in Small Firm Finance," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 68(3), pages 351-381, July.
    13. DeYoung, Robert & Glennon, Dennis & Nigro, Peter, 2008. "Borrower-lender distance, credit scoring, and loan performance: Evidence from informational-opaque small business borrowers," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 113-143, January.
    14. Pietro Alessandrini & Andrea F. Presbitero & Alberto Zazzaro, 2009. "Banks, Distances and Firms' Financing Constraints," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 13(2), pages 261-307.
    15. Ernst-Ludwig von Thadden, 1995. "Long-Term Contracts, Short-Term Investment and Monitoring," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 62(4), pages 557-575.
    16. Allen Berger & Robert DeYoung, 2001. "The Effects of Geographic Expansion on Bank Efficiency," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 19(2), pages 163-184, April.
    17. repec:ner:ucllon:http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/17678/ is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Chava, Sudheer & Purnanandam, Amiyatosh, 2011. "The effect of banking crisis on bank-dependent borrowers," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(1), pages 116-135, January.
    19. Berger, Allen N. & Demsetz, Rebecca S. & Strahan, Philip E., 1999. "The consolidation of the financial services industry: Causes, consequences, and implications for the future," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 23(2-4), pages 135-194, February.
    20. Sauro Mocetti & Marcello Pagnini & Enrico Sette, 2017. "Information Technology and Banking Organization," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 51(3), pages 313-338, June.
    21. Ugo Albertazzi & Domenico J. Marchetti, 2010. "Credit supply, flight to quality and evergreening: an analysis of bank-firm relationships after Lehman," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 756, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    22. Angelini, P. & Di Salvo, R. & Ferri, G., 1998. "Availability and cost of credit for small businesses: Customer relationships and credit cooperatives," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 22(6-8), pages 925-954, August.
    23. Sumit Agarwal, 2010. "Distance and Private Information in Lending," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(7), pages 2757-2788, July.
    24. Diamond, Douglas W, 1991. "Monitoring and Reputation: The Choice between Bank Loans and Directly Placed Debt," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(4), pages 689-721, August.
    25. Jiménez, Gabriel & Ongena, Steven & Peydró, José-Luis & Saurina, Jesús, 2010. "Credit supply - Identifying balance-sheet channels with loan applications and granted loans," Working Paper Series 1179, European Central Bank.
    26. Enrica Detragiache & Paolo Garella & Luigi Guiso, 2000. "Multiple versus Single Banking Relationships: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(3), pages 1133-1161, June.
    27. Wenying Jiangli & Haluk Unal & Chiwon Yom, 2008. "Relationship Lending, Accounting Disclosure, and Credit Availability during the Asian Financial Crisis," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 40(1), pages 25-55, February.
    28. Degryse, H.A. & Cerqueiro, G.M. & Ongena, S., 2007. "Distance, Bank Organizational Structure and Credit," Other publications TiSEM 34c2f607-3395-4fd9-9c52-4, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    29. Jose M. Liberti & Atif R. Mian, 2009. "Estimating the Effect of Hierarchies on Information Use," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(10), pages 4057-4090, October.
    30. Harhoff, Dietmar & Korting, Timm, 1998. "Lending relationships in Germany - Empirical evidence from survey data," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 22(10-11), pages 1317-1353, October.
    31. Farinha, Luisa A. & Santos, Joao A. C., 2002. "Switching from Single to Multiple Bank Lending Relationships: Determinants and Implications," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 124-151, April.
    32. Jeremy C. Stein, 2002. "Information Production and Capital Allocation: Decentralized versus Hierarchical Firms," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(5), pages 1891-1921, October.
    33. Harhoff, Dietmar & Körting, Timm, 1998. "Lending Relationships in Germany: Empirical Results from Survey Data," CEPR Discussion Papers 1917, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    34. Mayer,Colin & Vives,Xavier (ed.), 1993. "Capital Markets and Financial Intermediation," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521443975.
    35. Boot, Arnoud W. A., 2000. "Relationship Banking: What Do We Know?," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 7-25, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Uchida, Hirofumi & Udell, Gregory F. & Yamori, Nobuyoshi, 2012. "Loan officers and relationship lending to SMEs," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 97-122.
    2. Kano, Masaji & Uchida, Hirofumi & Udell, Gregory F. & Watanabe, Wako, 2011. "Information verifiability, bank organization, bank competition and bank-borrower relationships," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 935-954, April.
    3. Norden, L., 2015. "The Role of Banks in SME Finance," ERIM Inaugural Address Series Research in Management EIA-2015-062-F&A, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam..
    4. Loukil Sahar & Jarboui Anis, 2016. "Loan officers and soft information production," Cogent Business & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 3(1), pages 1199521-119, December.
    5. Refait-Alexandre, Catherine & Serve, Stéphanie, 2020. "Multiple banking relationships: Do SMEs mistrust their banks?," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    6. Patrick Bolton & Xavier Freixas & Leonardo Gambacorta & Paolo Emilio Mistrulli, 2016. "Relationship and Transaction Lending in a Crisis," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(10), pages 2643-2676.
    7. Thorsten Beck & Vasso Ioannidou & Larissa Schäfer, 2018. "Foreigners vs. Natives: Bank Lending Technologies and Loan Pricing," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(8), pages 3792-3820, August.
    8. Cerqueiro, Geraldo & Degryse, Hans & Ongena, Steven, 2011. "Rules versus discretion in loan rate setting," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 503-529, October.
    9. Bellucci, Andrea & Borisov, Alexander & Zazzaro, Alberto, 2010. "Does gender matter in bank-firm relationships? Evidence from small business lending," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(12), pages 2968-2984, December.
    10. Luca Papi & Emma Sarno & Alberto Zazzaro, 2017. "The geographical network of bank organizations: issues and evidence for Italy," Chapters, in: Ron Martin & Jane Pollard (ed.), Handbook on the Geographies of Money and Finance, chapter 8, pages 156-196, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    11. Berger, Allen N. & Klapper, Leora F. & Martinez Peria, Maria Soledad & Zaidi, Rida, 2008. "Bank ownership type and banking relationships," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 37-62, January.
    12. Salvatore Capasso & Stefano Monferrà & Gabriele Sampagnaro, 2015. "The Shadow Economy and Banks’ Lending Technology," CSEF Working Papers 422, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    13. Tlili, Rim, 2012. "Comment justifier la multibancarité au sein des PME ?," Economics Thesis from University Paris Dauphine, Paris Dauphine University, number 123456789/10919 edited by Etner, François.
    14. Djedidi-Kooli, Salima, 2009. "L’accès au financement des PME en France : quel rôle joué par la structure du système bancaire ?," Economics Thesis from University Paris Dauphine, Paris Dauphine University, number 123456789/8354 edited by Etner, François.
    15. Simon Cornée, 2014. "Soft Information and Default Prediction in Cooperative and Social Banks," Journal of Entrepreneurial and Organizational Diversity, European Research Institute on Cooperative and Social Enterprises, vol. 3(1), pages 89-103, June.
    16. Annalisa Castelli & Gerald P. Dwyer & Iftekhar Hasan, 2006. "Bank relationships and small firms’ financial performance," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 2006-05, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    17. Leonardo Gambacorta & Paolo Emilio Mistrulli, 2014. "Bank Heterogeneity and Interest Rate Setting: What Lessons Have We Learned since Lehman Brothers?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 46(4), pages 753-778, June.
    18. Annalisa Castelli & Gerald P. Dwyer & Iftekhar Hasan, 2012. "Bank Relationships and Firms' Financial Performance: The Italian Experience," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 18(1), pages 28-67, January.
    19. Andrea F. Presbitero & Gregory F. Udell & Alberto Zazzaro, 2014. "The Home Bias and the Credit Crunch: A Regional Perspective," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 46(s1), pages 53-85, February.
    20. Berger, Allen N. & Goulding, William & Rice, Tara, 2014. "Do small businesses still prefer community banks?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 264-278.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Distance; Soft information; Lending relationships; Financial crisis;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G20 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - General
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:37:y:2013:i:5:p:1372-1385. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jbf .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.