Business Cycles, Monetary Policy, and Bank Lending: Identifying the bank balance sheet channel with firm-bank match-level loan data

         
Author Name HOSONO Kaoru  (Gakushuin University) /MIYAKAWA Daisuke  (Nihon University)
Creation Date/NO. May 2014 14-E-026
Research Project Study on Corporate Finance and Firm Dynamics
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Abstract

This paper examines the impact of business cycles and monetary policy on bank loan supply. To this end, we use a unique firm-bank match-level dataset covering listed firms in Japan that allows us to control for firms' time-varying unobservable loan demand and endogenous bank-firm matching, so that we can identify the effects of business cycles and monetary policy on loan supply through the bank balance sheet channel. The estimation results indicate that banks with more liquidity or capital tend to lend more to their client firms. The quantitative impact of bank liquidity and capital on loan supply was economically sizable and larger when economic growth was lower. Furthermore, the quantitative impact of bank liquidity on the growth rate of loans more than doubled when quantitative easing was terminated. Overall, these results imply that changes in economic growth and monetary policy significantly affected loan supply through the bank balance sheet channel. We also find evidence that fluctuations in economic growth and monetary policy are transmitted to capital investment through the bank balance sheet channel in the case of firms with high investment opportunities.