Public guarantees, private banks’ incentives, and corporate outcomes: evidence from the COVID-19 crisis
We show that public guaranteed loans (PGL) increase credit availability improving real effects, but private banks’ incentives imply that weaker banks shift riskier corporate loans to taxpayers. We exploit credit register data during the COVID-19 shock in Spain, and a stylized model guides the empirics. Unlike non-PGL, banks provide more PGL to riskier firms in which banks have higher pre-crisis shares of firm total credit. Importantly, these effects are stronger for weaker banks.