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Zusammenfassung: Staatlich geförderte Bürgschaften zielen darauf ab, die durch fehlende Sicherheiten und eine hohe Informationsasymmetrie verursachte Lücke in der Finanzierung von Kleinunternehmen oder Start-ups zu schließen. Der vorliegende Beitrag quantifiziert den gesamtwirtschaftlichen Netto-Nutzen von Bürgschaftsbanken in den Neuen Bundesländern, in denen die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung noch hinterherhinkt. Anhand von Daten von fünf Bürgschaftsbanken sowie aus Unternehmens- und Bankbefragungen messen wir die Finanzierungs- und Projektzusatzwirkung von Kreditbürgschaften und Beteiligungsgarantien, die im Zeitraum 1991 – 2015 gewährt wurden. Kosten-Nutzen-Analysen zeigen, dass der gesamtwirtschaftliche Nutzen der Bürgschaftsbanken aufgrund der gestiegenen Produktion und Beschäftigung erheblich ist, während die gesamtwirtschaftlichen Kosten vernachlässigbar sind. Das reale BIP war dadurch in den ersten sieben Jahren nach Förderung um rund 1,2 Euro pro Euro Bürgschaft höher. Summary: State-supported guarantees aim to close the gap in the financing of small enterprises or start-ups caused by a lack of collateral and a high degree of information asymmetry. The present paper quantifies the macroeconomic net benefit of guarantee banks in the new German Länder, where economic development is still lagging behind. Using data from five guarantee banks as well as from enterprise and bank surveys, we measure the financing and project add-on effect of loan guarantees and equity guarantees granted in the period 1991 – 2015. Cost-benefit analyses show that the macroeconomic benefits of the guarantee banks are considerable due to increased production and employment, while the macroeconomic costs are negligible. Real GDP increases by about EUR 1.2 per euro guarantee in the first seven years after funding.

Zusammenfassung: Die theoretische Literatur erklärt den Mehrwert von Bürgschaftsbanken und anderen staatlich gestützten Bürgschaftseinrichtungen für kleine und mittlere Unternehmen (KMU) durch deren Wirkung, Finanzierungsengpässe infolge von fehlenden Sicherheiten und hohen Informationsasymmetrien zu reduzieren. Ein Überblick über neun Auswirkungsstudien zu den deutschen Bürgschaftsbanken und 34 Auswirkungsstudien zu Bürgschaftseinrichtungen in anderen entwickelten Ländern zeigt, dass diesen ein hoher einzel- und gesamtwirtschaftlicher Mehrwert bescheinigt wird, der in Krisenzeiten besonders hoch ist. Die Empirie unterstreicht damit die theoretischen Überlegungen. Aufgrund der Heterogenität der Datengrundlagen und angewandten Methoden lassen sich die Ergebnisse der einzelnen Studien jedoch nur eingeschränkt vergleichen. Die Datenverfügbarkeit ist ein Haupthindernis für die Durchführung strenger Evaluierungen mit angemessener Messung der kontrafaktischen Faktoren. Insbesondere zum gesamtwirtschaftlichen Nettonutzen der Bürgschaftseinrichtungen liegen noch zu wenige belastbare Ergebnisse vor. Summary: The theoretical literature explains the added value of guarantee banks and other state-supported guarantee schemes for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through their effect of reducing financing bottlenecks due to lack of collateral and high information asymmetries. An overview of nine impact studies on German guarantee banks and 34 impact studies on guarantee schemes in other developed countries shows that these are attested to have a high micro- and macroeconomic added value, which is particularly high in times of crisis. The empirical evidence thus underlines the theoretical considerations. Due to the heterogeneity of the data basis and applied methods, the results of the individual studies can only be compared to a limited extent. Data availability is a major obstacle to carrying out rigorous evaluations with appropriate measurement of counterfactual factors. There are still too few reliable results available, particularly on the macroeconomic net benefit of guarantee schemes.

In den letzten zwei Jahren wurde von vielen eine Kreditklemme für die deutschen Unternehmen als reales Problem, oder zumindest als akutes makroökonomisches Risiko, angesehen. Die vorliegende Untersuchung anhand der Bilanzdaten aus dem Jahresabschlussdatenpool der Deutschen Bundesbank macht allerdings deutlich, dass solche Krisenszenarien der Breite der deutschen Unternehmensfinanzierung nicht angemessen Rechnung tragen und damit den Stellenwert des Bankkredits für die Realwirtschaft teilweise überschätzen. Die Bankverschuldung der Unternehmen war überdies während der Finanzmarktkrise relativ stabil, während Handelskredite und konzerninterne Finanzierungen stärker zurückgingen.

Based on survey data covering 6,547 firms in 10 Central and Eastern European countries we examine the impact of the banking sector environment, as well as the institutional and regulatory environment, on credit constrained firms. We find that small and foreign-owned firms are less likely to demand credit compared to audited and innovative firms. On the other hand, small, medium, publicly listed, sole proprietorship and foreign-owned firms had a higher probability of being credit constrained in 2008-2009 than in 2012-2014. The banking sector's environment analysis reveals that firms operating in more concentrated banking markets are less likely to be credit constrained. However, higher capital requirements, increased levels of loan loss reserves and a higher presence of foreign banks have a negative impact on the availability of bank credit. The evaluation of the institutional and regulatory environment in which firms operate shows that credit information sharing is negatively correlated with access to credit. Furthermore, we show that banking sector contestability can mitigate this negative effect. Finally, we find that in a better credit information sharing environment, foreign banks are more likely to provide credit.

We shed light on the function, properties and optimal size of austerity using the standard sovereign debt model augmented to include incomplete information about credit risk. Austerity is defined as the shortfall of consumption from the level desired by a country and supported by its repayment capacity. We find that austerity serves as a tool for securing a more favourable loan package; that it is associated with over-investment even when investment does not create collateral; and that low risk borrowers may favour more to less severe austerity. These findings imply that the amount of fresh funds obtained by a sovereign is not a reliable measure of austerity suffered; and that austerity may actually be associated with higher growth. Our analysis accommodates costly signalling for gaining credibility and also assigns a novel role to spending multipliers in the determination of optimal austerity.

In the wake of the crisis, the capacity of many banks to lend to relatively high-risk sectors such as SMEs and young, innovative firms is seriously impaired by capital constraints and a strong deterioration in the quality of the assets on their balance sheets. Looking forward, it is vital that economic recovery in Europe is not constrained by an impaired banking sector. This paper provides an overview of the drivers of the stagnation of bank lending in Europe and discuss four main areas of opportunity for mitigating potential bank lending constraints: the further development of direct capital market financing alternatives for firms, the further development of securitisation, wider use of credit guarantee schemes and actions to address high ratios of non-performing loans.

Using a novel way to identify relationship and transaction banks, we study how banks' lending techniques affect funding to SMEs over the business cycle. For 21 countries we link the lending techniques that banks use in the direct vicinity of firms to these firms' credit constraints at two contrasting points of the business cycle. We show that relationship lending alleviates credit constraints during a cyclical downturn but not during a boom period. The positive impact of relationship lending in an economic downturn is strongest for smaller and more opaque firms and in regions where the downturn is more severe.

We use direct evidence on credit constraints to study their importance for household consumption growth and for welfare. We distentangle the direct effect on consumption growth of a currently binding credit constraint from the indirect effect of a potentially binding credit constraint that generates consumption risk. Our data are focused on job losers. We find that less than 5% of job losers experience a binding credit constraint, but those who do experience significant welfare losses, and consumption growth is 24% higher than for the rest of the population. However, even among those who are unconstrained and are able to borrow if needed, consumption responds to transitory income., Economic and Social Research Council

The paper studies empirically how relative supply and demand conditions on the capital market affected US firm-level investment over the business cycles from 1977 to 2011. A dynamic econometric specification of capital accumulation including sales growth, Tobin's q, the cash flow-capital ratio and the cost of capital as covariates is fitted by a rolling window System GMM estimator using quarterly data on publicly traded US corporations in order to obtain time-varying coefficients. We find that the investment effects of the variables capturing the demand-side of the capital market, i.e. sales growth and Tobin's q, behave counter-cyclically, whereas this does not hold for the investment effects of supply-side variables such as cash flow or the cost of capital. Our results suggest that investment was typically driven by adverse demand rather than supply conditions on the capital market during the most severe recessions.

This paper develops a simple model with credit rationing and endogenous default risk in which the expectation of a bailout may lead to a financial sector which is too large with respect to the the social optimum. The paper concludes with a short discussion of how this model could be used as a building block for models aimed at endogenizing the probability of a bailout, and discussing the relationship between the size of the finanancial sector and economic growth in the presence of default risk.

Durch Bereitstellung von Krediten tragen Banken zur Transformation von Finanzkapital in Sachkapital bei. Die Kreditvergabepolitik der Schweizer Banken hat sich im vergangenen Vierteljahrhundert stark gewandelt. Basierend auf einem Datensatz (1987-2012) mit bankengruppenspezifischen Bilanzdaten betrachten wir diese Strategieänderungen vor dem Hintergrund der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklungen. Mit Hilfe von Zeitreihenmethoden untersuchen wir die Auswirkungen der Kreditvergabe von Schweizer Banken auf die inländische Investitionstätigkeit. Die Transformation von Finanz- in Sachkapital wird sowohl auf der aggregierten, wie auch auf der desaggregierten Ebene untersucht. Auswirkungen diverser makroökonomischer Schocks auf die Investitionstätigkeit über die Aktiv- und Passivseite der Bankbilanzen werden analysiert. Auf Ebene der Bankengruppen wird der Frage nachgegangen, ob Banken eigenständig Kreditzyklen auslösen, weiter vorantreiben und zu Überhitzungen oder Kreditklemmen beitragen., KOF Studies, 43

We study the effects of credit shocks in a model with heterogeneous entrepreneurs, financing constraints, and a realistic firm size distribution. As entrepreneurial firms can grow only slowly and rely heavily on retained earnings to expand the size of their business in this set-up, we show that, by reducing entrepreneurial firm size and earnings, negative shocks have a very persistent effect on real activity. In determining the speed of recovery from an adverse economic shock, the most important factor is the extent to which the shock erodes entrepreneurial wealth.

This paper studies loan activity in a context where banks must follow Basel Accord-type rules and acquire financing from households. Loan activity typically decreases when entrepreneurs' investment returns decline, and we study which type of policy could revigorate an economy in a trough. We find that active monetary policy increases loan volume even when the economy is in good shape; introducing active capital requirement policy can be effective as well if it implies tightening of regulation in bad times. This is performed with an heterogeneous agent economy with occupational choice, financial intermediation and aggregate shocks to the distribution of entrepreneurial returns.

Chapter 1 Introduction 11 Chapter 2 Reserve pools 23 Chapter 3 Public intervention and financial crises: an empirical study 43 Chapter 4 Credit conditions and durable consumption: evidence of a strong link 67 Chapter 5 The influence of bank ownership on credit supply: evidence from Russia's recent financial crisis 89 Chapter 6 Conclusions 109

We examine the real effects of credit-supply shocks using a series of structural vector autoregressive models estimated on the basis on a new quarterly data set for Denmark spanning the past 90 years or so. We find no effects on the unemployment level from supplyshocks to credit from commercial/savings banks in the periods 1922-1949 and 1981-2011 even though these periods contained several cases of severe banking and financial crises. Furthermore, credit-supply shocks do not seem to explain any significant share of the volatility in the unemployment rate during these periods. We attribute these findings to the large market for mortgage-credit loans in Denmark raised through bond-financed mortgage banks combined with comprehensive government interventions to safeguard financial stability during times of crises. There might, however, be indications of real effects from credit-supply shocks in the period 1950-1980 where credit rationing and exchange controls served as important economic-policy instruments. Overall these results indicate that both the financialsystem structure as well as the extent of government intervention during banking crises play a key role to the significance of real effects of credit-supply shocks. These findings must be kept in mind when modelling the role of financial intermediaries in macroeconomic models.

This work studies the interactions between income distribution and monetary and fiscal policies in terms of ensuing dynamics of macro variables (GDP growth, unemployment, etc.) on the grounds of an agent-based Keynesian model. The direct ancestor of this work is the 'Keynes meeting Schumpeter' formalism presented in Dosi et al. (2010). To that model, we add a banking sector and a monetary authority setting interest rates and credit lending conditions. The model combines Keynesian mechanisms of demand generation, a 'Schumpeterian' innovation-fueled process of growth and Minskian credit dynamics. The robustness of the model is checked against its capability to jointly account for a large set of empirical regularities both at the micro level and at the macro one. The model is able to catch salient features underlying the current as well as previous recessions, the impact of financial factors and the role in them of income distribution. We find that different income distribution regimes heavily affect macroeconomic performance: more unequal economies are exposed to more severe business cycles fluctuations, higher unemployment rates, and higher probability of crises. On the policy side, fiscal policies do not only dampen business cycles, reduce unemployment and the likelihood of experiencing a huge crisis. In some circumstances they also affect positively long-term growth. Further, the more income distribution is skewed toward profits, the greater the effects of fiscal policies. About monetary policy, we find a strong non-linearity in the way interest rates affect macroeconomic dynamics: in one 'regime' with low rates, changes in interest rates are ineffective up to a threshold beyond which increasing the interest rate implies smaller output growth rates and larger output volatility, unemployment and likelihood of crises.

Micro and small enterprises (MSEs) in developing countries are typically considered to be severely credit constrained. Additionally, high business risks may partly explain why the capital stocks of MSEs remain low. This article analyzes the determinants of the capital stocks of MSEs in poor economies focusing on credit constraints and risk. The analysis is based on a unique, albeit cross-sectional but backward-looking, micro data set on MSEs covering the economic capitals of seven West-African countries. The main result is that capital market imperfections indeed seem to explain an important part of the variation in capital stocks in the early lifetime of MSEs. Furthermore, the analyses show that risk plays a key role in capital accumulation. Risk-averse individuals seem to adjust their initially low capital stocks upwards when enterprises grow older. MSEs in risky activities owned by wealthy individuals even seem to over-invest when they start their business and subsequently adjust capital stocks downwards. As other firms simultaneously suffer from capital shortages, such behaviour may imply large inefficiencies.

A personal bankruptcy law that allows for a "fresh start" after bankruptcy reduces the individual risk involved in entrepreneurial activity. On the other hand, as risk shifts to creditors who recover less of their credit after a debtor's bankruptcy, lenders may charge higher interest rates or ration credit supply, which can hamper entrepreneurship. Both aspects of a more forgiving personal bankruptcy law are less relevant for wealthy potential. - entrepreneurs who still risk losing their wealth, but tend not to face higher interest rates because they provide collateral. This paper illustrates these effects in a model and tests the hypotheses derived by exploiting the introduction of a "fresh start" policy in Germany in 1999 as a natural experiment, based on representative household panel data. The results indicate that the insurance effect of a more forgiving personal bankruptcy law exceeds the interest effect and on balance encourages less wealthy individuals to enter into entrepreneurship.

Das Handwerk ist mit seinen vielen kleinen und mittleren Betrieben ein Kernstück der deutschen Wirtschaft. Ein wirtschaftlich gesundes Handwerk ist ein wichtiger Wirtschaftsfaktor für die Region. Dazu bedarf es jedoch eines ausreichenden Zugangs zu Finanzierungsinstrumenten. Das Handwerk ist aufgrund seiner Unternehmens- und Branchenstruktur hierbei mit spezifischen Problemen konfrontiert. Die vorliegende Untersuchung liefert Einblicke in die gegenwärtige Finanzierungssituation der Handwerksbetriebe und diskutiert, inwiefern sich diese verbessern lässt. The trade firms comprise the most versatile economic sector. With many small and medium sized enterprises this sector is important for the German economy. Prosperintrade firms are also essential for the regional economy in Saxony. These firms require access to adequate financial instruments. Due to its corporate and sector structure the trade faces specific problems. This study therefore provides insights into the current financial situation of trade companies. First, to understand the financing situation of the trade, current literature about the financial situation of small and medium-sized enterprises is discussed with regard to specific implications for the trade. Second, a survey of selected Saxon trade companies analyses the current financing situation. To acquire insights from the investors' perspective, representatives of the regional credit/banking sector are asked to evaluate the current situation. The results of the surveys are examinedusing both qualitative and quantitative methods.

This paper analyses the role of bank-related constraints in explaining the sharp slowdown in bank lending to non-financial corporations in Germany during the recent financial crisis. We use a panel approach based on a unique data set which matches the individual responses of the banks participating in the Eurosystem's Bank Lending Survey with the corresponding micro data on loan quantities and prices. Our main finding is that bank-related supply and demand-side indicators were both important in explaining the slowdown of bank lending during the crisis years. The results suggest that the dampening impact of the bank-related restrictions was strongest from the third quarter of 2009 to the first quarter of 2010. Over this short period, more than one-third of the explained negative loan development was due to the restrictive adjustments of purely bank-related factors, such as the costs related to the bank's capital, market financing conditions and the bank's liquidity position.

In the education literature, it is generally acknowledged that both credit and insurance for students are rationed. In order to provide a rationale for these observations, we present a model with perfectly competitive banks and risk averse students who have private information on their ability to learn and can decide to default on debt. We show that the combination of ex-post moral hazard and adverse selection produces credit market rationing when default penalties are low. When default penalties increase, the level of student risk aversion proves crucial in determining the market outcome. If risk aversion is low, banks offer non-insuring pooling contracts at equilibrium that may result in overinvestment in education. If student risk aversion is high, high ability students are separated and student loan contracts involve a limited amount of insurance.

We explore whether finance influences the impact of labour market institutions on unemployment. Using a data set of 18 OECD countries over 1980-2004, we estimate a panel VectorAutoRegressive model. We check whether causalities from labour market variables to unemployment are affected by financial factors. In Belgium, Italy, Australia, Japan and Spain, accounting for financial indicators mitigates the benefits of labour market flexibilization or makes it harmful to employment. In Austria, Canada, Finland and Portugal, it reduces its detrimental impact or makes it beneficial. In Ireland and Netherlands, both effects prevail, depending on the labour market indicator used.

Recent literature finds that exporters are particularly vulnerable to financial market frictions.As a consequence, exports may be lower than their efficient levels. For this reason,many countries support exporters by underwriting export credit guarantees. The empiricalevidence on the effects of those policies is, however, very limited. In this paper, we usesectoral data on export credit guarantees issued by the German government. We investigatewhether those guarantees indeed do increase exports, and whether they remedy the exportrestrictingeffect of credit market imperfections both on the sectoral and on the exportmarket levels. Exploiting the sectoral structure of a rich three-ways panel data set ofGerman exports, we control for unobserved heterogeneity on the country-year, sectoryear,and country-sector dimensions. We document a robust export-increasing effect ofguarantees. There is some evidence that the effect is larger for export markets with poorfinancial institutions and in sectors that rely more on external finance.

The breakdown of short-term funding markets was a key feature of the global financial crisis of 2007/8. Combining insights from the literature on global games and network growth, we develop a simple model that sheds light on how network topology interacts with the funding structure of financial institutions to determine system-wide crises. We show how the arrival of bad news about a financial institution leads others to lose confidence in it and how this, in turn, spreads across the entire interbank network. The rate of system-wide bank failure is rendered endogenous, depending crucially on both the rate at which bad news arrives and on the maturity of debt contracts. The conditions under which the financial system makes a sharp transition from a dense network of credit relations to a sparse network where credit freezes readily occur are characterized. Our results also emphasize the role of hysteresis - once broken, credit relations take a long time to re-establish as a result of common knowledge of the equilibrium. Our findings shed light on the nature of public policy responses both during and after the crisis.

This paper employs a panel vector autoregressive model for the member countries of the Euro Area to explore the role of banks during the slump of the real economy that followed the financial crisis. In particular, we seek to quantify the macroeconomic effects of adverse loan supply shocks, which are identified using sign restrictions. We find that loan supply shocks significantly contributed to the evolution of the loan volume and real GDP growth in all member countries during the financial crisis. However, concerning both, the timing and the magnitude of the shocks our results also indicate that the Euro Area was characterized by a considerable degree of cross-country heterogeneity.

This paper uses a multi region DSGE model with collateral constrained households and residential investment to examine the effectiveness of fiscal policy stimulus measures in a credit crisis. The paper explores alternative scenarios which differ by the type of budgetary measure, its length, the degree of monetary accommodation and the level of international coordination. In particular we provide estimates for New EU Member States where we take into account two aspects. First, debt denomination in foreign currency and second, higher nominal interest rates, which makes it less likely that the Central Bank is restricted by the zero bound and will consequently not accommodate a fiscal stimulus. We also compare our results to other recent results obtained in the literature on fiscal policy which generally do not consider credit constrained households.

Aggregate loan development typically hinges on a combination of factors that impact simultaneously on the demand and the supply side of bank lending. The financial turmoil starting in mid-2007 had detrimental consequences for banks’ balance-sheets, cost of funds and profitability, thus weighing negatively on their ability to supply new loans. This paper examines the impact of supply constraints on bank lending in the euro area with a special focus on this turmoil period. The empirical evidence presented suggests that banks’ ability and willingness to supply loans affects overall bank lending activity in general and has done so particularly during the financial crisis. Applying a cross-country panel-econometric approach using a unique confidential data set on results from the Eurosystem’s bank lending survey allows us to disentangle loan supply and demand effects. We find that even when controlling for the effects coming from the demand side loan growth is negatively affected by supply-side constraints. This applies both for loans to households for house purchase and for loans to non-financial corporations. We furthermore provide evidence that the impact of supply-side constraints, especially related to disruptions of banks’ access to wholesale funding and their liquidity positions, was reinforced since the eruption of the financial crisis and corresponding adjustments in banks’ loan portfolios seem to have been geared primarily via prices rather than outright quantity restrictions.

Global trade contracted quickly and severely during the global crisis. This paper, using a unique dataset of French firms, matching together export data with firm-level credit constraints, shows that most of the 2008-2009 trade collapse is accounted by the unprecedented demand shock and by product characteristics. While all firms have been evenly affected by the crisis, large firms did so mainly through the intensive margin and by reducing the portfolio of products offered in each destination served. Smaller exporters instead have been forced to reduce the range of destinations served or to stop exporting altogether. Credit constraints, on their part, emerged as an aggravating factor for firms active in sectors of high financial dependence. Nonetheless, as the share of credit constrained firms is small and their number did not increase much during the crisis, the overall impact of credit constraints on trade remains limited.

This paper examines the conditions for credit volume or borrower rationing in a competitive credit market in which the project characteristics are private information of the borrowers. There can only be credit volume rationing if the higher-risk credit applicants have a higher return in the event of a project success than the lower-risk credit applicants. Then the higher-risk borrowers are not rationed and obtain the social efficient credit volume. If the incentive compatibility constraint of the higher risk borrowers is binding, the lower-risk borrowers are credit volume rationed such that the constraint holds as an equation. If credit volume rationing is not sufficient to separate the borrower types, there is additionally a rationing of the low-risk borrowers. If the low-risk borrowers prefer a pooling to a separating contract, then there will not be a Cournot-Nash separating equilibrium, but a Wilson and a Grossmann pooling equilibrium.

This paper presents a micro data approach to the identification of credit crunches. Using a survey among German firms which regularly queries the firms' assessment of the current willingness of banks to extend credit we estimate the probability of a restrictive credit supply policy by time taking into account the creditworthiness of borrowers. Creditworthiness is approximated by firm-specific factors, e.g. the firms' assessment of their current business situation and their business expectations. After controlling for the banks' refinancing costs, which are also likely to affect the supply of loans, we derive a credit crunch indicator, which measures that part of the shift in the willingness to lend that is neither explained by firm-specific factors nor by refinancing costs.

We analyze an oligopolistic microcredit market characterized by asymmetric infirmation and institutions that can offer only one type of contract. We study the effects of competition on contract choice when small entrepreneurs can borrow from more than one institution due to the absence of credit bureaus. We show that appropriate contract design can eliminate the ex-ante incentives for multiple borrowing. Moreover, when the market is still largely unserved and particularly risky, a screening strategy leading to contract differentiation and credit rationing is unambiguously the most effective to avoid multiple borrowing.

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 demand shocks that may vary across lenders. We find strong evidence that credit tightened in the relatively early stages of the crises caused by the following types of bank financial distress: 1) low equity ratio; 2) low Tier 1 capital ratio; and 3) losses on financial assets. We also find that foreign banks transmit to Main Street a larger portion of similar financial shocks than domestic banks. The observed decline in credit is greater among high-risk firms and firms with fewer tangible assets.

The weakness of credit growth in the United States and Europe has given rise to concerns that the financial crisis has led to a credit crunch which has deepened the recession in the real economy and poses a serious threat to the recovery that seems to have started in the most recent months. In this contribution we find that so far the development of credit aggregates and interest rates for loans does not provide strong evidence for a supply restraint that goes beyond hat could be expected given the deterioration of the quality of borrowers against the background of the exceptionally severe economic downturn. Still, the behaviour of interest rate spreads in the United States does indicate that the effectiveness of monetary policy is reduced for the time being as a result of distress in the financial sector, and we see some risks that inappropriate bank capitalization may restrain credit growth and threaten the current recovery, especially in Germany where core capital is low by international standards. Policy measures to avoid a credit crunch should focus on preventing undercapitalization of banks from becoming a serious limitation to credit growth.

Using data from a quick survey of various rural (RFIs) and microfinance institutions (MFIs) in East Asia, the paper tries to find out how those institutions and their clientele have been affected by the global financial crisis, how they have coped with the ongoing crisis, and what they plan to do in the future to ensure the stability of the rural financial system and the continuing access of clients to financial services. The microfinance sector in Asia continues to evolve with emphasis on efficiency and strong growth in outreach. The limited data from the quick survey validate the growth in loan portfolios and increase in the number of clients, with growth varying significantly by country depending on internal and external factors during the period before the global financial crisis. Impacts vary depending on external and internal factors faced by RFIs and MFIs. However, they continue to maintain a positive attitude and expect that business will pick up as a result of an increase in demand for loans to finance livelihood projects and various microenterprises. They are aware of the threats and opportunities brought about by the global financial crisis. The analysis leads to some lessons for policymakers, bank regulators, rural financial institutions, and microfinance institutions that are committed to provide inclusive financial services to member clients.

Over the course of the recent liquidity crisis, the Federal Reserve made several changes to its primary credit lending facility such as narrowing the spread between the primary credit rate and the target funds rate and increasing the term of the borrowing. In this paper, we use the model developed by Artuç and Demiralp (2008) to provide a structural assessment of the effectiveness of these changes. Our results suggest that these changes were effective in stabilizing the federal funds market.

Finanzierungsbeschränkungen gelten als eine der wichtigsten Hürden im Innovationsprozess. Im Innovationsindikator 2009 hat sich Deutschland im Bereich Finanzierung gegenüber dem Vorjahr verschlechtert und verharrt mit Rang 15 abgeschlagen in der Schlussgruppe. Die Finanzierungsfrage bleibt weiterhin ein zentrales Problem bei der Stärkung der Innovationskraft. Besonders bei der Finanzierung von Unternehmensgründungen hinkt Deutschland hinterher. Schärfere Finanzierungskonditionen für etablierte Unternehmen und die Erhöhung der Risikoprämien auf breiter Front lassen keinen anderen Schluss zu: Die Finanzierung von Innovationen, ohnehin durch partielles Marktversagen erschwert, wird durch die Wirtschafts- und Finanzkrise noch schwieriger werden. Umso wichtiger ist es, rechtzeitig gegenzusteuern. Das DIW Berlin schlägt hierzu vor, die Sanierung des Bankensektors entschiedener als bisher voranzutreiben, Venture Capital gezielt zu fördern und die Rahmenbedingung für Beteiligungskapital zu verbessern.

Trotz des größten Wirtschaftseinbruchs in der deutschen Nachkriegsgeschichte hat die internationale Krise die Bürger kaum erreicht. Das wird sich mittelfristig bedrohlich ändern, wenn es nicht gelingt, rechtzeitig eine aufziehende Kreditklemme und eine bedrohlich wachsende Staatsverschuldung einzudämmen.

This paper deals with the analysis of the impact of credit rationing on the farmer’s economic equilibrium and the analysis of different policy scenarios in a derived neoclassical adjustment cost framework. The theoretical model is an optimal dynamic investment model, in which the upper bound on investment is introduced. The limit of the investment enables to analyse the consequence of the occurrence of credit rationing on farmer’s capital accumulation, investment and supply. The method of optimal control is used to solve the optimization problem. The results show that the occurrence of credit rationing may significantly determine a farmer’s economic equilibrium. Then the analysis of defined policy scenarios suggests that a loan guarantee efficiently solves the problem of the occurrence of external credit rationing. Interest rate subsidy may produce overinvestment and, thus, increases the probability of occurrence of the crowding-out effect, especially in the group of non-credit constraint farmers. Moreover, as far as the cost of agricultural policy is concerned, other agricultural support tools are less effective. The numerical application shows that the farmer’s economic equilibrium is mostly sensitive to the initial bound on investment, the parameter of the cost function, the price, the level of technology and the discount rate. Finally, if the uncertainty is introduced, then the level of investment spending and capital accumulation is lower.

This paper deals with the analysis of the impact of credit rationing on the farmer's economic equilibrium and the analysis of different policy scenarios in a derived neoclassical adjustment cost framework. The theoretical model is an optimal dynamic investment model, in which the upper bound on investment is introduced. The limit of the investment enables to analyse the consequence of the occurrence of credit rationing on farmer's capital accumulation, investment and supply. The method of optimal control is used to solve the optimization problem. The results show that the occurrence of credit rationing may significantly determine a farmer's economic equilibrium. Then the analysis of defined policy scenarios suggests that a loan guarantee efficiently solves the problem of the occurrence of external credit rationing. Interest rate subsidy may produce overinvestment and, thus, increases the probability of occurrence of the crowdingout effect, especially in the group of non-credit constraint farmers. Moreover, as far as the cost of agricultural policy is concerned, other agricultural support tools are less effective. The numerical application shows that the farmer's economic equilibrium is mostly sensitive to the initial bound on investment, the parameter of the cost function, the price, the level of technology and the discount rate. Finally, if the uncertainty is introduced, then the level of investment spending and capital accumulation is lower. Das Diskussionspapier beschäftigt sich den Einflüssen der Kreditrationierung auf das unternehmerische Verhalten von landwirtschaftlichen Betriebsleitern und wie dieses durch agrarpolitische Eingriffe beeinflusst wird. Die Effekte werden mit Hilfe eines dynamischen neoklassischen Investitionsmodels mit unteren und oberen Schranken analysiert. Neben der Investitionstätigkeit werden in diesem Kontext die Konsequenzen der Kreditrationierung auf die betriebliche Kapitalakkumulation und das landwirtschaftliche Angebot untersucht. Die Modelle werden mit Hilfe der Kontrolltheorie gelöst. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Kreditrationierung die Entwicklungsmöglichkeiten der landwirtschaftlichen Betriebe erheblich einschränken. Darüber hinaus ergab sich bei der Analyse von Politikszenarien, dass sich die negativen Effekte der Rationierung durch die Einführung von Bürgschaften effizient reduzieren lassen. Zinssubventionen können dagegen zu einer Überinvestition und Mitnahmeeffekten in der Gruppe der Landwirte führen, die nicht kreditrationiert sind, wodurch auch eine Verdrängung privater zugunsten öffentlich geförderter Investitionen erfolgt. Andere agrarpolitische Eingriffe sind weniger effektiv, insbesondere wenn die Kosten der Durchführung dieser Maßnahmen berücksichtigt werden. Simulationsberechnungen zeigten, dass das langfristige Gleichgewicht der Betriebe durch den anfänglichen Zugang zu Krediten, der Parametern der Kostenfunktion, den Produktpreis, dem Stand der Technologie und dem Zinssatz beeinflusst wird. Wird Unsicherheit in dem Model berücksichtigt, so führt dies generell zu einer geringeren Investitionstätigkeit und zu einer geringeren Kapitalakkumulation.

This paper endeavours to illustrate the consequences of a credit squeeze by inserting a standard model of retail banks into some familiar macroeconomic models. Some possible policy conclusions are drawn about the benefits of incentives to increase lending at these times, and to reduce it in much better times.

An important theoretical literature motivates collateral as a mechanism that mitigates adverse selection, credit rationing, and other inefficiencies that arise when borrowers hold ex ante private information. There is no clear empirical evidence regarding the central implication of this literature - that a reduction in asymmetric information reduces the incidence of collateral. We exploit exogenous variation in lender information related to the adoption of an information technology that reduces ex ante private information, and compare collateral outcomes before and after adoption. Our results are consistent with this central implication of the private-information models and support the empirical importance of this theory.