Title: The impact of lending relationship on risk premium and credit availability: evidence from Tunisia

Authors: Meryem Bellouma, Abdelwahed Omri, Sami Bennaceur

Addresses: Institut Superieur de Gestion de Tunis, 41, Avenue de la Liberte, Cite Bouchoucha, Le Bardo 2000 – Tunis, Tunisia. ' Institut Superieur de Gestion de Tunis, 41, Avenue de la Liberte, Cite Bouchoucha, Le Bardo 2000 – Tunis, Tunisia. ' ESSEC Tunis 4 rue Abou Zakaria, El Hafsi 1089 Montfleury, Tunisia

Abstract: This paper presents empirical evidence from a representative sample of Tunisian firms on the importance of loan officers in the production of |soft information| by opposition of |hard| information, testing whether firm borrowers have a relationship with their bank or with their loan officer. To establish the main determinants of the credit conditions in Tunisia, our study is based on a sample of 297 companies, dealing with a Tunisian bank from 1998 to 2002. The main finding of this paper is that the risk premium depends only on the hard information proxies. However, the availability of credit seems related to the interaction between the loan officer and the customer through the collection of |soft| information.

Keywords: lending relationship; risk premium; credit availability; panel data; Tobit model; Tunisia; loan officers; banking; bank loans.

DOI: 10.1504/AAJFA.2009.024300

Afro-Asian Journal of Finance and Accounting, 2009 Vol.1 No.3, pp.235 - 250

Published online: 31 Mar 2009 *

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