Specialization in Bank Lending: Evidence from Exporting Firms

Abstract

We develop an empirical approach for identifying specialization in bank lending using granular data on borrower activities. We illustrate the approach by characterizing bank specialization by export market, combining bank, loan, and export data for all firms in Peru. We find that all banks specialize in at least one export market, that firms take the pattern of bank specialization into account when selecting their lending banks, and that credit supply shocks disproportionately affect a firm’s exports to markets where the lender specializes in. Thus, bank specialization makes credit difficult to substitute, which has consequences for competition in credit markets and the transmission of credit shocks to the real economy.