Gregory F. Udell

• Indiana University Bloomington

We study the transmission of (unconventional) monetary policy to the real sector when firm decisions depend on both current and future credit market conditions. For a given level of current credit access, investment and employment increase more for firms expecting bank credit to improve in the future. Three separate unconventional policies by the E...

Access to external finance is essential for firms to engage in innovation processes and to grow. The regulatory environment plays a vital role in facilitating this access. We explore the role of employment protection legislation in the probability that firms obtain bank credit. We propose that restrictions on structuring employees’ work schedules a...

We investigate the effects of countercyclical prudential buffers on bank risk-taking. We exploit the introduction of dynamic loan loss provisioning in Spain, mandating that banks use historical average loss rates in their estimation of loan loss provisions. We find that dynamic loan loss provisioning is associated with reductions in timely loan los...

A large literature has developed on the distinction between hard and soft information with much of this literature focused on displacement of soft information with hard information. We investigate whether the propensity of loan officers at local branches to incorporate soft information in the credit scoring process is affected by the geographical d...

Using unique micro data compiled from the real estate registry in Japan, we examine more than 400,000 loan-to-value (LTV) business loan ratios to draw implications for caps on LTV ratios as a macroprudential policy measure. We find that the LTV ratio exhibits counter-cyclicality, behavior that would have severely impeded the efficacy of a simple LT...

By using mid-corporate loan-level data on loan approval decisions collected from a large European bank, we investigate whether spatially-based bank organizational frictions affect borrowers’ credit availability.

This chapter focuses on the structure, performance, and some of the defining characteristics of the Japanese banking industry. An analysis of the banking industry in Japan may be of particular interest because of its important role in one of world’s largest economies, its historical orientation to banks in its financial system, its idiosyncratic fe...

We study the impact of the announcement of the European Central Bank's (ECB's) Outright Monetary Transactions Program on small firms’ access to finance using a matched firm‐bank data set from eight Eurozone countries. We find that following the announcement, credit access improved relatively more for firms borrowing from banks with high balance she...

We investigate the impact of employment protection on firms’ credit access by looking at both credit obtained from banks and firms’ decision to apply for a loan. We find that greater flexibility in structuring the employees’ working hours and in dismissing employees increases the probability that firms obtain credit and that greater flexibility in...

We study the effect of sovereign stress on SMEs’ capital structure using restricted-access data from the European Central Bank. We find that during the sovereign debt crisis, and controlling for borrowers’ quality, firms in stressed countries became more likely to be denied credit, to be credit rationed, and to face higher loan rates. Less creditwo...

Mounting evidence indicates that firms, particularly SMEs, suffered from a significant credit crunch during this crisis. We analyze for the first time whether trade credit provided an alternative source of external finance to SMEs during the crisis. Using firm-level Spanish data we find that credit constrained SMEs depend on trade credit, but not b...

Information-based theories of financial intermediation focus on delegated monitoring. However, there is little evidence on how markets discipline intermediaries who fail at this function. We exploit the direct link between corporate fraud and monitoring failure and examine how a venture capital (VC) firm׳s reputation is affected when it fails to pr...

This chapter focuses on the Japanese banking industry. We examine its structure, its performance, and some of its defining characteristics. We first provide an overview of the Japanese banking system. Topics covered are the importance of banking and intermediated finance in the Japanese economy, segmentation in the Japanese banking market, market s...

Using a unique micro dataset compiled from official real estate registries in Japan, we examine the evolution of loan-to-value (LTV) ratios for business loans over the 1975 to 2009 period, the determinants of these ratios, and the ex post performance of the borrowers. We find that the LTV ratio exhibits counter-cyclicality, implying that the increa...

Mounting evidence indicates that firms, particularly SMEs, suffered from a significant credit crunch during this crisis. Little research exists on how SMEs coped with this problem due to a lack of data in the U.S. and elsewhere. We analyse for the first time whether trade credit provided an alternative source of external finance to SMEs during the...

Information-based theories of financial intermediation focus on delegated monitoring. However, there is little evidence on how markets discipline financial intermediaries who fail at this function. We exploit the direct link between corporate fraud and monitoring failure and examine how a venture capital (VC) firm’s reputation is affected when it f...

We study the sensitivity of credit supply to bank financial conditions in 16 emerging European countries before and during the financial crisis. We use survey data on 10,701 applicant and non-applicant firms that enable us to disentangle effects driven by positive and negative shocks to the banking system from demand shocks that may vary across len...

Risk taking is the core of banks’ business and there is a clear intertemporal relationship between bank lending and loan losses. Therefore, banks are subject to various rules and regulations on risk measurement, risk reporting, and risk provisioning. In this paper we investigate the link between the timeliness of loan loss recognition and bank risk...

This paper provides the first empirical evidence that bank regulation is associated with cross-border spillover effects through the lending activities of large multinational banks. We analyze business lending by 155 banks to 9613 firms in 1976 different localities across 16 countries. We find that lower barriers to entry, tighter restrictions on ba...

Using a large loan sample from 1990 to 2006, we examine why firms form new banking relationships. Small public firms that do not have existing relationships with large banks are more likely to form new banking relationships. On average, firms obtain higher loan amounts when they form new banking relationships, while small firms also experience an i...

We study the effects of the interplay between deregulation and governance on risk taking in the financial industry. We consider a large natural experiment in Spain where the removal of regulatory geographic constraints for savings banks led to a nationwide expansion of these banks during the past two decades. Based on a unique data set that combine...

This paper provides the first empirical evidence on how home-country regulation and supervision affects bank risk-taking in host-country markets. We analyze lending by 136 banks to 8,253 firms in 1,513 different localities across 13 countries. We find strong evidence that laxer regulatory restrictions in the home country are associated with higher...

Information-based theories of financial intermediation focus on delegated monitoring. However, there is little evidence on how markets discipline financial intermediaries who fail at this function. This paper uses the venture capital (VC) market to address this gap in the empirical literature by looking at how VC’s reputations are affected when the...

This paper investigates whether the benefits of bank–borrower relationships differ depending on three factors identified in the theoretical literature: verifiability of information, bank size and complexity, and bank competition. We extend the current literature by analyzing how relationship lending affects loan contract terms and credit availabili...

We study the eect of nancial distress in foreign parent banks on local SME -nancing in 14 central and eastern European countries during the early stages of the 2007-2008 nancial crisis. We use survey data on 9; 360 applicant and non-applicant rms that enable us to disentangle eeects driven by shocks to the banking system from recession-driven deman...

We study the effect of financial distress in foreign parent banks on local SME financing in 14 central and eastern European countries during the early stages of the 2007-2008 financial crisis. We use survey data on applicant and non-applicant firms that enable us to disentangle effects driven by shocks to the banking system from recession-driven de...

We study the e¤ect of …nancial distress in foreign parent banks on local SME …nanc-ing in 14 European countries during the early stages of the 2007-2008 …nancial crisis. We use survey data on applicant and non-applicant …rms that enable us to disentangle e¤ects driven by shocks to the banking system from recession-driven demand shocks that may vary...

We study the effects of the interplay between banking deregulation and corporate governance on the lending behavior of savings banks in Spain. The removal of branching barriers that constrained these banks has led to a nationwide expansion, increasing the number of their branches and their commercial lending volume dramatically. Analyzing a unique...

This Economic Letter explores how the credit crunch might affect small business access to finance. While it is not possible to know how severe this credit crunch will become, researchers can explore how the crunch could affect small business finance. We begin our analysis by looking at how small businesses access external sources of finance. Then w...

This paper empirically investigates how banks evaluate the creditworthiness of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Following SME loan underwriting literature that distinguishes among different lending technologies, we test whether the typical SME bank loan is underwritten primarily based on just a single technology. We find that although fi...

This article presents a survey and an analysis of the academic literature on relationship lending to small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs). It is noted herein that relationship lending depends on soft (non-quantifiable) information, while other “lending technologies” depend on hard (quantifiable) information. Based on relative benefits and costs,...

Current theoretical and empirical research suggests that small banks have a comparative advantage in processing soft information and delivering relationship lending. The most comprehensive analysis of this view found using US data that smaller SMEs borrow from smaller banks and smaller banks have stronger relationships with their borrowers [Berger,...

Previous research suggests that loan officers play a critical role in relationship lending by producing soft information about SMEs. For the first time, we empirically confirm this hypothesis We also examine whether the role of loan officers differs from small to large banks as predicted by Stein (2002). While we find that small banks produce more...

Recent studies argue that the spread-adjusted Taylor rule (STR), which includes a response to the credit spread, replicates monetary policy in the United State. We show (1) STR is a theoretically optimal monetary policy under heterogeneous loan interest rate contracts in both discretionay and commitment monetary policies, (2) however, the optimal r...

Using 30,466 bank loan deals originated during 1990-2005, we examine why firms switch to new banks for their repeat loans instead of staying with their relationship banks. Employing a variety of measures to proxy for firms' informational transparency, we find that the soft information hypothesis, which states that informationally opaque firms are l...

The current literature on SME loan underwriting assumes that banks use just one of two lending technologies: relationship lending for opaque SMEs and transactions-based lending for relatively transparent SMEs. Recent work has departed from this view and hypothesizes that banks use a variety of distinctly different lending technologies. It emphasize...

Using 30,466 bank loans originated during 1990-2006, we examine why firms switch to new banks for their repeat loans. Employing a variety of measures to proxy for firm-level asymmetric information, we find a non-monotonic relationship between the extent of information asymmetry and a firm's propensity to switch to a new bank - the most opaque firms...

We offer a new paradigm for understanding the impact of financial shocks on the flow of credit to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Drawing from research on the lending view of monetary policy and research on SME financial contracting, we introduce the concept of glending channels.h A lending channel is a two-dimensional conduit through wh...

We propose a more complete conceptual framework for analysis of SME credit availability issues. In this framework, lending technologies are the key conduit through which government policies and national financial structures affect credit availability. We emphasize a causal chain from policy to financial structures, which affect the feasibility and...

Theoretical and empirical work suggests that commercial loan officers play a critical role in relationship lending by producing soft information about their SME borrowers. We test whether loan officers in the Japanese SME loan market perform this role in a manner that is consistent with the theoretical predictions in the relationship lending litera...

Using data from a unique survey in Japan, we investigate the relevance of different lending technologies which are utilized in lending to small- and medium-sized enterprises. We characterize loans from a technology point of view, and ask (i) to what extent different lending technologies are used, (ii) how complementary the technologies are, and (ii...

Despite the importance of the hypothesis that trade creditors may act as relationship lenders, it has been virtually impossible to directly test this hypothesis because of a lack of data. We attempt to overcome this problem by using a relatively new Japanese database on small and midsized enterprises (SMEs) that contains information on the strength...

Theoretical models of lending and industrial organization theory predict that firm access to credit depends critically on bank market structure. However, empirical studies offer mixed results. Some studies find that higher concentration is associated with higher credit availability consistent with the information hypothesis that less competitive ba...

This paper investigates whether the benefits of bank-borrower relationships differ depending on three factors identified in the theoretical literature: verifiability of information, bank size and complexity, and bank competition. We extend the current literature by analyzing how relationship lending affects loan contract terms and credit availabili...

Market size structure refers to the distribution of shares of different size classes of local market participants, where the sizes are inclusive of assets both within and outside the local market. We apply this new measure of market structure in two empirical analyses of the US banking industry to address concerns regarding the effects of the conso...

We jointly analyze the static, selection, and dynamic effects of domestic, foreign, and state ownership on bank performance. We argue that it is important to include indicators of all the relevant governance effects in the same model. “Nonrobustness” checks (which purposely exclude some indicators) support this argument. Using data from Argentina i...

It is tempting to view debt as the less glamorous side of entrepreneurial finance. In the context of an entrepreneurial firm's financial growth cycle, it is generally believed that infusions of external debt typically follow infusions of external equity (e.g., see Pratt and Morris, 1987). Moreover, the organized venture capital market - a relative...

A vast and often confusing economics literature relates competition to investment in innovation. Following Joseph Schumpeter, one view is that monopoly and large scale promote investment in research and development by allowing a firm to capture a larger fraction of its benefits and by providing a more stable platform for a firm to invest in R&D. Ot...

Factoring is a form of asset-based finance where the credit is extended based on the value of the borrower's accounts receivable. In recent years factoring has experienced phenomenal growth and has become an important source of financing-especially short-term working capital-for small and medium-size enterprises and corporations, reaching a worldwi...

We review how deregulation, technological advance, and increased competitive rivalry have affected the size and health of the United States community banking sector and the quality and availability of banking products and services. We then develop a simple theoretical framework for analyzing how these changes have affected the competitive viability...

We test a new hypothesis that may help explain the procyclicality of bank lending. The institutional memory hypothesis is driven by deterioration in the ability of loan officers over the bank's lending cycle that results in an easing of credit standards. We test this hypothesis using data from individual US banks over 1980–2000: over 200,000 bank-l...

This paper investigates the value added by private information exchanges that share information on business payment performance. We discuss how this information is collected and disseminated by the world’s largest private information broker, Dun & Bradstreet. We provide the first empirical examination of the importance of this information at the le...

Stylised facts suggest that bank lending behaviour is highly procyclical. We offer a new hypothesis that may help explain why this occurs. The institutional memory hypothesis is driven by deterioration in the ability of loan officers over the bank.s lending cycle that results in an easing of credit standards. This easing of standards may be compoun...

Stylized facts suggest that bank lending behavior is highly procyclical. We offer a new hypothesis that may help explain why this occurs. The institutional memory hypothesis is driven by deterioration in the ability of loan officers over the bank's lending cycle that results in an easing of credit standards. This easing of standards may be compound...

This paper models the inner workings of relationship lending, the implications for bank organisational structure, and the effects of shocks to the economic environment on the availability of relationship credit to small businesses. Relationship lending depends on the accumulation over time by the loan officer of "soft" information. Because the loan...

Banking industry consolidation has raised concern about the supply of small business credit since large banks generally invest lower proportions of their assets in small business loans. However, we find that the likelihood that a small business borrows from a bank of a given size is roughly proportional to the local market presence of banks of that...

We test hypotheses about the effects of bank size, foreign ownership, and distress on lending to informationally opaque small firms using a rich new data set on Argentinean banks, firms, and loans. We also test hypotheses about borrowing from a single bank versus multiple banks. Our results suggest that large and foreign-owned institutions may have...

Recent studies argue that the spread-adjusted Taylor rule (STR), which includes a response to the credit spread, replicates monetary policy in the United State. We show (1) STR is a theoretically optimal monetary policy under heterogeneous loan interest rate contracts in both discretionay and commitment monetary policies, (2) however, the optimal r...

Banking industry consolidation has raised concern about the supply of small business credit since large banks generally invest lower proportions of their assets in small business loans. However, we find that the likelihood that a small business borrows from a bank of a given size is roughly proportional to the local market presence of banks of that...

This paper models the inner workings of relationship lending, the implications for bank organisational structure, and the effects of shocks to the economic environment on the availability of relationship credit to small businesses. Relationship lending depends on the accumulation over time by the loan officer of "soft" information. Because the loan...

We test hypotheses about the effects of bank size, foreign ownership, and distress on lending to informationally opaque small firms using a rich new data set on Argentinean banks, firms, and loans. We also test hypotheses about borrowing from a single bank versus multiple banks. Our results suggest that large and foreign-owned institutions may have...

Cross-border consolidation of financial institutions within Europe has been relatively limited, possibly reflecting efficiency barriers to operating across borders, including distance; differences in language, culture, currency, and regulatory/supervisory structures; and explicit or implicit rules against foreign competitors. EU policies such as th...

We address the causes, consequences, and implications of the cross-border consolidation of financial institutions by reviewing several hundred studies, providing comparative international data, and estimating cross-border banking efficiency in France, Germany, Spain, the U.K., and the U.S. during the 1990s. We find that, on average, domestic banks...

We examine the effects of bank M&As on small business lending. Our methodology permits empirical analysis of the great majority of U.S. bank M&As since the late 1970s -- over 6,000 M&As involving over 10,000 banks (some active banks are counted multiple times). We are the first to decompose the impact of M&As on small business lending into static e...

Recent studies argue that the spread-adjusted Taylor rule (STR), which includes a response to the credit spread, replicates monetary policy in the United State. We show (1) STR is a theoretically optimal monetary policy under heterogeneous loan interest rate contracts in both discretionay and commitment monetary policies, (2) however, the optimal r...

We examine the economics of financing small business in private equity and debt markets. Firms are viewed through a financial growth cycle paradigm in which different capital structures are optimal at different points in the cycle. We show the sources of small business finance,and how capital structure varies with firm size and age. The interconnec...

We examine the effects of bank M&As on small business lending using data on over 6000 recent U.S. bank M&As. We are the first to decompose the impact of M&As into the static effects from simply melding the antecedent institutions and the dynamic effects associated with post-M&A refocusing of the consolidated institution. We are also the first to es...

This paper examines the issue of the impact of the consolidation of the U.S. banking industry on the supply of bank credit to small businesses. It reviews the popular argument that bank mergers and acquisitions create larger institutions that may be less inclined to lend to small business. In particular, these institutions may lose their local comm...

We examine the effects of bank M&As on small business lending using data on over 6,000 recent U.S. bank M&As. We are the first to decompose the impact of M&As into static effects from simply melding the antecedent institutions, and dynamic effects associated with post-M&A refocusing of the consolidated institution. We are also the first to estimate...

We examine the effects of over 6,000 M&As; involving more than 10,000 banks on small business lending. We are the first to decompose the impact of M&As; into static effects associated with a simple melding of the antecedent institutions and dynamic effects associated with post-M&A; refocusing of the consolidated institution. We are also the first t...

The rise of managed healthcare organizations (MCOs) and the associated increased integration among providers has transformed US healthcare and at the same time raised antitrust concern. This paper examines how competition among MCOs affects the efficiency gains of improved price coordination achieved through integration. MCOs offer differentiated s...

This article examines the role of relationship lending in small firm finance. It examines price and nonprice terms of bank lines of credit extended to small firms. The focus on bank lines of credit allows the examination of a type of loan contract in which the bank-borrower relationship is likely to be an important mechanism for solving the asymmet...

This paper shows that the conditionality of investment decisions in R&D has a critical impact on portfolio risk, and implies that traditional diversification strategies should be reevaluated when a portfolio is constructed. Real option theory argues that research projects have conditional or option-like risk and return properties, and are different...

This paper examines the role of relationship lending using a data set on small firm finance. The abilities to acquire private information over time about borrower quality and to use this information in designing debt contracts largely define the unique nature of commercial banking. Recently, a theoretical literature on relationship lending has appe...

The formerly planned economies (FPEs) of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are a rather disparate group of nations with widely differing financial structures. In some of the countries of Eastern Europe the financial infrastructure is beginning to assume the characteristics that are found in the West. In other instances, the very institutio...

This paper examines the reallocation of bank credit from loans to securities in the early 1990s using data on virtually all U.S. banks from 1979 to 1992. The authors investigate implementation of risk-based capital and other regulatory and nonregulatory changes as possible causes of a supply-driven credit crunch. The main empirical implication of t...

The private placement market is an important source of long-term funds for U.S. corporations. Nonetheless, it has received relatively little attention in the financial press or the academic literature, partly because of the nature of the instrument itself. In particular, a private placement is a debt or equity security sold in the United States tha...

This paper examines the credit rationing debate using detailed contract information on over one million commercial bank loans from 1977 to 1988. While commercial loan rates are "sticky," consistent with rationing, this stickiness varies with loan contract terms in ways that are not predicted by equilibrium credit rationing theory. In addition, the...

We introduce a new hybrid approach to joint estimation of Value at Risk (VaR) and Expected Shortfall (ES) for high quantiles of return distributions. We investigate the relative performance of VaR and ES models using daily returns for sixteen stock market indices (eight from developed and eight from emerging markets) prior to and during the 2008 fi...