Disequilibrium in the UK corporate loan market

Abstract

In the last decade, a debate has resurfaced about whether financial constraints stemming from asymmetric information and incentive problems play an important role in propagating monetary policy shocks. This paper investigates the monetary transmission mechanism in the UK and its impact on the availability of bank credit to small and medium size firms. The empirical specification is based on a disequilibrium model that allows for the possibility of transitory credit rationing. Sample firms are classified endogenously into ‘borrowing constrained’ and ‘borrowing unconstrained’. The analysis of credit rationing takes into account not only firm specific variables, but also important macroeconomic factors such as the prevailing monetary conditions and the stage of the business cycle. We find that (i) firms’ assets play an important role as collateral in mitigating borrowing constraints; (ii) during periods of tight monetary conditions corporate demand for bank credit increases, whereas the supply of bank loans is reduced; (iii) to avoid bank credit rationing smaller companies increase their reliance on interfirm credit; (iv) the proportion of borrowing constrained firms is significantly higher during the recession years of the early 1990s than at other times.