In this note we document political lending cycles for German savings banks. We find that savings banks on average increase supply of commercial loans by €7.6 million in the year of a local election in their respective county or municipality (Kommunalwahl). For all savings banks combined this amounts to €3.4 billion (0.4% of total credit supply in Germany in a complete electoral cycle) more credit in election years. Credit growth at savings banks increases by 0.7 percentage points, which corresponds to a 40% increase relative to non-election years. Consistent with this result, we also find that the performance of the savings banks follows the same electoral cycle. The loans that the savings banks generate during election years perform worse in the first three years of maturity and loan losses tend to be realized in the middle of the election cycle.

We study whether banks’ involvement into different types of securitization activity – asset backed securities (ABS) and covered bonds – in Spain influences credit supply before and during the financial crisis. While both ABS and covered bonds were hit by the crisis, the former were hit more severely. Employing a disequilibrium model to identify credit rationing, we find that firms with banks that were more involved in securitization see their credit constraints more relaxed in normal periods. In contrast, only greater covered bonds issuance reduces credit rationing during crisis periods whereas ABS aggravates these firms’ credit rationing in crisis periods. Our results are in line with the theoretical predictions that a securitization instrument that retains risk (covered bond) may induce a more prudent risk behavior of banks than an instrument that provides risk transferring (ABS).

This article applies an adjusted growth diagnostic approach to identify the currently most binding constraint on financing growth in the West Balkan countries. Since this group of economies faces both structural and systemic transformation problems, the original supply-side approach might not be sufficient to detect the most binding constraint. The results of the analysis indicate that the binding constraint on credit and investment growth in the region is the high and increasing share of nonperforming loans, primarily in the household sector, due to policy failures. This article compares the Balkan countries to a group of advanced transition economies. Single-country and panel regressions indicate that demand-side factors do not play a constraining role on growth in the West Balkan countries, but they do in the advanced transition economies.

With a unique loan portfolio maintained by a top-20 universal bank in Germany, this study tests whether unconventional monetary policy by the European Central Bank (ECB) reduced corporate borrowing costs. We decompose corporate lending rates into refinancing costs, as determined by money markets, and markups that the bank is able to charge its customers in regional markets. This decomposition reveals how banks transmit monetary policy within their organizations. To identify policy effects on loan rate components, we exploit the co-existence of eurozone-wide security purchase programs and regional fiscal policies at the district level. ECB purchase programs reduced refinancing costs significantly, even in an economy not specifically targeted for sovereign debt stress relief, but not loan rates themselves. However, asset purchases mitigated those loan price hikes due to additional credit demand stimulated by regional tax policy and enabled the bank to realize larger economic margins.

Does bank instability push borrowers to use crowdfunding as a source of external finance? We identify stressed banks and link them to a unique, manually constructed sample of 157 new ventures seeking equity crowdfunding. The sample comprises projects from all German equity crowdfunding platforms since 2011, which we compare with 200 ventures that do not use crowdfunding. Crowdfunding is significantly more likely for new ventures that interact with stressed banks. Innovative funding is thus particularly relevant when conventional financiers are facing crises. But crowdfunded ventures are generally also more opaque and risky than new ventures that do not use crowdfunding.

Kann es nach einer Herabstufung der Bonität eines Staates zu einer Dynamik von steigenden Zinsen auf Staatsanleihen und weiter fallenden Ratings kommen, die unausweichlich in einem Staatsbankrott endet? Die hohe Persistenz von Ratings sowie die Beobachtung, dass Zinsen häufig negativ auf eine Herabstufung reagieren, legen die Möglichkeit einer solchen Abwärtsspirale nahe. Empirisch ist diese Dynamik allerdings nicht zu sehen. In den Daten ist im Gegenteil ausschließlich eine sehr langsame Annäherung an ein langfristiges Gleichgewicht von guten Ratings und niedrigen Zinsen zu beobachten. Gleichzeitig ist die Persistenz von Ratings allerdings hoch genug, um nach einer Herabstufung auf ein hochspekulatives Niveau (Rating von B oder schlechter) massive und langandauernde Zinsaufschläge zu erzeugen. Da eine solche Herabstufung in der Realität allerdings äußerst selten erfolgt, ist die Existenz des oben beschriebenen Teufelskreises zu verneinen. Eine negative Entwicklung wie zum Beispiel in Griechenland in den Jahren 2010 und 2011 lässt sich nicht als Ergebnis der Wechselwirkung von Ratings und Zinsen erklären.

In the wake of the recent financial crisis, many governments extended public guarantees to banks. We take advantage of a natural experiment, in which long-standing public guarantees were removed for a set of German banks following a lawsuit, to identify the real effects of these guarantees on the allocation of credit (“allocative efficiency”). Using matched bank/firm data, we find that public guarantees reduce allocative efficiency. With guarantees in place, poorly performing firms invest more and maintain higher rates of sales growth. Moreover, firms produce less efficiently in the presence of public guarantees. Consistently, we show that guarantees reduce the likelihood that firms exit the market. These findings suggest that public guarantees hinder restructuring activities and prevent resources to flow to the most productive uses.

Die europäische Staatsschuldenkrise hat in vielen Ländern zu Zinsaufschlägen auf Staatsanleihen geführt. Dies war vor allem in den Jahren 2010 und 2011 in Ländern wie Griechenland, Italien oder Spanien zu beobachten. Zur gleichen Zeit blieben die Kreditrisiken deutscher oder französischer Staatsanleihen auf einem moderaten Niveau. Trotz der unterschiedlichen Entwicklung in den Niveaus findet man ein hohes Maß an Gleichbewegung von Kreditrisiken in den Ländern des Euroraums. Dieser Beitrag untersucht, inwieweit dies durch strukturelle Ähnlichkeiten, internationale Verflechtungen und globale Marktentwicklungen erklärt werden kann.