Information sharing and the volume of private credit in transition: Evidence from Ukrainian bank-level panel dataAuthor-Name: Grajzl, Peter

The effect of lenders' information sharing on the volume of credit is ambiguous in theory and underexplored empirically. Departing from the scant existing literature, which draws on country-level aggregate data, we study the impact of information sharing on the volume of private credit by examining unique bank-level panel data from Ukraine, a transition economy where information sharing among banks is only a recent phenomenon. Employing the fixed-effects framework and dynamic panel methods to address endogeneity due to the non-exogenous nature of banks' choice to participate in information sharing, we find no credit volume effect of information sharing when information sharing takes place through the central bank-administered public credit registry. In contrast, information sharing through private credit bureaus is associated with an increase in the volume of bank lending, in particular when a bank is partner of multiple private credit bureaus. This effect is robust and non-negligible in magnitude.