Abstract: How do long-term relationships between banks and firms shape loan pricing and capital allocation? Using administrative data from Mexico’s credit registry, I provide stark evidence for an insurance view of relationship lending. When firms repeatedly borrow from the same bank, the pass-through of their default risk to loan rates is nearly zero, and past risk assessments persistently influence credit terms. In contrast, switching to a new bank results in full risk pass-through, consistent with competitive market predictions. I rationalize this evidence in a structural model where banks compete for borrowers by offering optimal long-term contracts. Switching costs sustain commitment to banking relationships, enabling insurance. The estimated model replicates the observed pricing patterns and generates new predictions on when firms receive cheap funding and when they are tempted to switch, which I validate in the data. At the macro level, switching costs enhance capital allocation by strengthening relationships, recovering over 10 percent of welfare losses from financial frictions. However, when embedded in a New Keynesian framework, relationships dampen monetary and fiscal policy pass-through, as banks optimally absorb part of these policy shocks.
Discussant: William Diamond, University of Pennsylvania
Matteo Benetton, University of California-Berkeley
Greg Buchak, Stanford University
Abstract: Small businesses in the US are frequently excluded from borrowing through traditional term loans or lines of credit and rely instead on highly standardized, high-interest rate business credit cards to meet their financing needs. Are rates high because this credit is costly to provide or because lenders charge high markups? We document that average credit card utilization is almost 30% and is higher for firms facing significant cashflow volatility. While the unconditional delinquency rate is low, it is strongly correlated with utilization, potentially making cards expensive to provide because borrowers make interest-generating draws when they are least able to repay. We develop and estimate a structural model of firms’ card demand, utilization, and default choice, accounting for imperfect competition and the correlation between utilization and default. We find that while the correlation between utilization and delinquency leads to modestly higher rates, they are primarily explained by markups rather than lender costs, making business card provision highly profitable. In counterfactual analyses we show that under systematic stress scenarios, absent large shocks to lender funding costs, lender profits tend to rise in times of borrower stress, as higher revenue from utilization more than offsets increases in delinquency. Finally, we evaluate proposed capital regulations that add a portion of undrawn credit limits to bank risk-weighted assets. Such rules reduce bank credit provision and push some lending outside the regulated banking sector, while modestly reducing firm surplus. Because credit card lending tends to be more profitable in times of stress, such regulations may be counterproductive for bank stability.
Discussant: Yilin (David) Yang, City University of Hong Kong
Abstract: I document that 96% of banks’ funding to nonbank financiers (NBFs) occurs through credit lines, while NBFs hold about 84% of corporate term loans. NBFs use credit lines to hedge against inventory uncertainty and gain liquidity support, while banks’ liquidity advantage makes them natural insurers. I develop a novel macro-finance model to quantify the value of contingent liquidity. Banks benefit from “risk-sharing” with NBFs by “renting” their balance sheets through extending credit lines, while internalizing the effect of a larger credit limit on their drawdown choices. Calibrated to U.S. syndicated loan data, the model shows that credit lines offer NBFs partial flexibility. By endogenously determining credit line limits, the interconnected economy proves more resilient during crises, experiencing smaller increases in NBFs’ default risk, milder asset price declines (4% vs. 7%), and supporting more safe assets. Policy experiments reveal that tighter capital requirements have non-monotonic effects on bank-NBF dynamics, while regulating bank off-balance sheet credit lines also reduces NBFs’ loan-bearing capacity.
Discussant: Nicola Cetorelli, Federal Reserve Bank of New York
