Convergence of credit structure around the world

This paper studies convergence of credit structure worldwide. We hand-collect data on credit to household and firm credit for 143 countries over the period 1995-2014. First, we separately document the existence of a convergence process of total credit, household credit and firm credit, respectively. Second, we find that convergence of household credit occurs faster than firm credit, inducing a process of convergence of the share of household credit to total credit. Third, convergence occurs faster in low-income countries and in countries with a lower initial level of total credit but slows down after the 2008 global financial crisis. Finally, our data investigation does not support the idea that convergence is driven by changing conditions in developing countries.