Do non-financial firms react to monetary policy actions as banks do?

Abstract

The theory of the bank lending channel indicates that financial institutions with larger size, higher capitalisation and higher liquidity present a greater capacity to maintain their levels of credit supply in a situation of monetary contraction. However, there is a paucity of (European) studies that analyse the bank lending channel from the non-financial firms’ perspective. This paper analyzes the impact of monetary policy actions on a large sample of Spanish firms. The empirical evidence for Spain shows that the impact of size, solvency and liquidity are similar for banks and non-financial firms.