Loan market competition and bank risk taking

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

56 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Recent literature (Boyd and De Nicoló, J Finance 60:1329–1343, ) has argued that competition in the loan market lowers bank risk by reducing the risk-taking incentives of borrowers. Using a model where competition arises from falling switching costs for entrepreneurs, we show that the impact of loan market competition on banks is reversed if banks can adjust their loan portfolios. The reason is that when borrowers become safer, banks want to offset the effect on their balance sheet and switch to higher-risk lending. They even overcompensate the effect of safer borrowers because loan market competition erodes their franchise values and thus increases their risk-taking incentives.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)71-81
Number of pages11
JournalJournal of Financial Services Research
Volume37
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2010
Externally publishedYes

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