Credit supply shocks and the global financial crisis in three small open economies

We investigate the impact of domestic and foreign credit supply shocks on a number of key macroeconomic variables for three small open economies: Australia, Canada and the UK. We find that negative domestic and foreign credit supply shocks together explain, on average, one-third to one-half of the fall in business credit and rise in spreads seen in the three countries during the financial crisis; other identified non-credit-supply shocks explain the rest. Credit supply shocks also explain around one-sixth of the fall in output in the three countries, and one-quarter of the fall initially seen in UK inflation. This suggests that credit supply shocks played an important role in the financial crisis, but not a dominant one.