Travail de recherche/Working paper
| Résumé : | Social banks are financial intermediaries paying attention to non-economic (i.e. social, ethical, and environmental) criteria. This paper investigates the behavior of social banks in the European credit market. We use a unique hand-collected dataset on 389 business loans granted by a French social bank. Our results show that the social bank charges below-market interest rates for viable social projects. Moreover, regardless of their creditworthiness, motivated borrowers respond to advantageous credit conditions by significantly lowering their probability of default. We interpret this outcome as the first evidence of reciprocity in the credit market. |
