Hierarchy of bank loan approval and loan performance

This paper analyzes data from a regional Italian bank to provide new evidence on the relationship between who, within a bank, approves a loan and the subsequent performance of the loan. The size of the bank and its pool of clients, who are primarily small- and medium-size firms, comprises characteristics of both relationship-based and transaction-based lending technologies. Our key finding is that the probability of loan default increases as the loan approval decision is made at higher levels of the lending-decision hierarchy. This evidence supports the primacy of relationship-lending technology relative to transaction-based lending technology.