Banking sector concentration, credit shocks and aggregate fluctuations

Abstract

This paper studies whether the raise in concentration experienced by the Spanish banking sector has lead to the increase of bank-specific credit shocks contribution to aggregate credit. We decompose aggregate credit volatility and find that (i) the Spanish banking sector is granular, (ii) the direct effect of bank-specific shocks accounts for the overwhelming majority of the variation in aggregate volatility, contrary to the manufacturing sector, and (iii) the raise in concentration translated into an increase of bank-specific shocks contribution to aggregate volatility.