糖心TV

This paper studies the conditions under which banks and firms choose to engage in single versus multiple bank lending relationships. Our theoretical model supports the view that borrowers prefer a single lender, which in our setting entail larger loan size, to signal their better quality, and to compensate for the riskiness of their investment opportunity. Compared to safe environments, lenders should then react more positively to single lending requests in riskier environments, despite their risk aversion. We test these hypotheses in an experimental credit market in which we exogenously vary borrowers' ability to choose how many lenders they want to be funded by -- thus making such signal more or less salient--, and the riskiness of borrowers' investment opportunity. Our results suggest that the commitment signal embedded in loan requests heavily influences lending decisions: lenders are significantly less likely to lend when borrowers can choose between single and multiple lenders -- and choose multiple -- than when the number of lenders is exogenously given, even after controlling for risk aversion. At the same time, we find evidence that single lending acts as a signal of quality for borrowers when the investment opportunity they require funding for is risky: lenders reward single lending to a higher extent in risky than in safe environments.