Research interests
Financial Intermediation, Corporate Finance, Macro-Finance
Collateral, Monitoring, and Bank Information Production
- AFA 2025, EFA-DT 2025, CFRC 2025, NFA 2024Abstract
This paper studies the impact of collateral values on banks' ex-post information production through monitoring. Using the near universe corporate loan data from France, I observe the actual values of pledged collateral and construct direct measures of information production activities. I show that high collateral values crowd out these activities, indicated by reduced information about both the borrowing firms and the pledged collateral. The decline in information production weakens banks' ability to predict defaults on new loans and to adjust impairments or renegotiate existing loans. I develop a stylized model that explains how collateral values shape the bank's incentives to produce different types of information after loan origination and how such information enhances credit quality and total welfare.
Bank Specialization within Production Networks, with Olivier De Jonghe and Yushi Peng
- EARIE 2025Abstract
This paper studies the benefits and costs of lending specialization along supply chains, where banks serve as common lenders. Using firm-to-firm transaction and credit registry data from Belgium, we show that common lending is persistent and widespread. Exploiting an exogenous manufacturing shock, we find that it negatively affects firm production, credit demand along the supply chain and among common lenders. We develop and estimate a structural model of credit demand and supply in imperfectly competitive markets, where firms are connected through the production network. Our estimation results reveal that firms prefer to borrow from the same bank as their suppliers or customers, which gives common lenders market power and enables them to charge higher markups. At the same time, the spillover effects of common lending give banks an incentive to offer lower interest rates to maintain their role as common lenders. A cost pass-through mechanism further amplifies the transmission of real-sector shocks to the financial sector.
Collateral and Credit, with Hans Degryse, Olivier De Jonghe, and Luc Laeven
- IBEFA-ASSA 2026, CICF 2025, FMA 2025, IBEFA-FUNCAS 2025Abstract
This paper studies the role of collateral using the euro area corporate credit registry, AnaCredit. We document key facts about the importance, distribution, and composition of collateral, including its presence, types, and values. On average, 70% of credit amounts are collateralized. Real estate and financial assets are the most pledged, while physical movable assets and other intangible assets are less present. In addition, we show that the aggregate collateral value pledged to the banking sector is substantial, driven mainly by real estate in most countries. For the first time, we examine the collateral channel in bank credit using the actual value of individual collateral. By exploiting within-firm and within-bank variations for newly issued secured loans, we find that the elasticity of collateral value to loan commitment amounts is around 0.7-0.8. This collateral value elasticity exhibits substantial country and time heterogeneity, which can be explained by legal, financial, and macro conditions.
Banks and Firms: Evidence from a Legal Reform Impacting Contract Design, with Hans Degryse, Olivier De Jonghe and Nikolaos Karagiannis
Abstract
This paper examines how a legal reform in Belgium, designed to strengthen the bargaining position of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), influenced bank lending behavior. The reform introduced prepayment options for term loans and mandated banks to provide written justifications for loan suitability and rejections. Using a quasi-natural experiment framework and a proprietary bank-firm-credit-type dataset comprising over 273,000 monthly observations, we demonstrate that while the reform increased overall credit availability by 2.2%, it also led to unintended strategic responses from banks. Specifically, banks reduced the supply of term loans 0.7% and redirected credit supply to credit lines, which rose by 4%, to mitigate the regulatory impact. The shift was more pronounced for borrowers with longer banking relationships, highlighting the role of relationship banking in the strategic allocation of credit. Additionally, we find that loan prepayment flexibility led to a 0.2 percentage point decline in the probability of default and a 4% increase in collateral requirements. Our findings underscore the importance of anticipating financial institutions’ strategic behavior in response to regulatory changes and reveal potential trade-offs in policy design intended to improve SME credit access.
Collateral Constraints and Labor Market Power, with Jin Cao and Honghao Zheng
Corporate Debt Resolution and Credit Cycles, with Martin Kornejew
Disclaimer: The views expressed on this website are my own and do not represent the views of the National Bank of Belgium or the Eurosystem.