How Forced Switches Reveal Switching Costs: Evidence from the Loan Market
利用立陶宛信贷登记数据和两家银行关闭事件，研究发现当陷入困境的银行关闭迫使企业转换贷款银行时，企业立即并永久地以更低利率借款，这揭示了企业事前转换成本的下限。
Abstract This article proposes a novel way to estimate consumer switching costs and uses Lithuanian credit register data and two bank closures to provide this estimate for the loan market. I show that when a distressed bank’s closure forced firms to switch, they started borrowing at lower interest rates instantly and permanently and that this drop revealed the lower bound of firms’ ex ante switching costs. A healthy bank’s closure showed no such effect. The article’s findings suggest that distressed banks hold up and overcharge firms and that by closing and resolving such banks with good-bank/bad-bank separation regulators can improve firm financing.