The value of in-person banking : evidence from U.S. small businesses
Abstract
We produce the first systematic study of the determinants and implications of in-person banking. Using survey data from the U.S., we show that firms which are informationally opaque or operate in rural areas are liable to contact their primary bank in-person. This tendency extends to older, less educated, and female business owners. We find that a relationship based on face-to-face communication, on average, lasts 17.88 months longer, spans a wider range of financial services, and is more likely to be exclusive. The associated loans mature 3.37 months later and bear interest rates which are 11 basis points lower. For good quality firms, in-person communication also relates to less discouraged borrowing. These results are robust to multiple approaches for endogeneity, including recursive bivariate probits, treatment effect models, and instrumental variables regressions. Overall, our findings offer empirical grounding to soft information theory and a note of caution to banks against suppressing channels of interpersonal communication.
Citation
Zhang , S , Han , L , Kallias , K & Kallias , A 2021 , ' The value of in-person banking : evidence from U.S. small businesses ' , Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting , vol. First Online . https://doi.org/10.1007/s11156-021-00982-5
Publication
Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0924-865XType
Journal article
Collections
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