Product Market Peers in Lending
研究了企业是否更愿意从曾贷款给同行的银行借款，以降低信息不对称，但也会因担心商业机密泄露而避免共享银行。基于银行合并事件，发现企业会因保密成本而更换银行，但若自身信息不透明则更可能留下。
This study examines how product market peers affect lending relationships. We contend that firms are more likely to borrow from a bank that has previously lent to a peer to mitigate information asymmetry with the bank when potential information processing efficiencies are greater (i.e., information efficiency hypothesis), but there will be a decreased propensity to borrow from a shared lender when the costs of leaking proprietary information are greater (i.e., proprietary information leakage hypothesis). We find that, after bank mergers that involve peers’ lenders, firms are more likely to switch banks to avoid sharing the same lenders as a product market peer. In cross-sectional analyses, we find that after bank mergers that involve a peer’s bank, firms are less likely to switch when the firm’s financial reporting is more opaque and has greater monitoring needs, consistent with the information efficiency hypothesis. In contrast, firms are more likely to switch after bank mergers that involve a peer’s bank when the firm belongs to an industry with greater proprietary costs and when the bank has greater incentives to leak information, consistent with the proprietary cost hypothesis. This paper was accepted by Brian Bushee, accounting.