In search of frictions[Les frictions informationnelles dans les marchés du crédit et des biens]

This thesis consists of four chapters that study how imperfect information affects both credit and goods markets. The contribution of chapter 1 is to extend the study of search frictions to credit markets. Motivated by empirical evidence I document on local credit markets in France, I propose a theory of firm-bank matching subject to search frictions. I estimate structurally my model on French data using the staggered rollout of Broadband Internet, from 1997 to 2007, as a shock that reduced search frictions. I show that both the allocation of credit the cost of debt for small businesses were affected by this shock. In chapter 2, we document that banks specialize locally by industry to reduce asymmetric information, and that this specialization shapes the equilibrium amount of borrowing by small firms. For identification, we exploit the reallocation of local clients from closed down branches to nearby branches of the same bank. We show that branch reallocation leads, on average, to a decline in small firm borrowing that is twice larger for firms reallocated to branches less specialized in their industry than the original one. In chapter 3, we study the macro implications of credit relationship flows. We show that banks actively adjust their lending supply along both extensive and intensive margins and that gross flows associated with credit relationships (i) are volatile and pervasive throughout the cycle, and (ii) can account for up to 46% of the cyclical and 90% of the long-run variations in aggregate bank credit. We also highlight the role of the extensive margin in the transmission of monetary. Finally, we study in chapter 4 the role of Broadband Internet in reducing search frictions faced by French importers. We use the staggered rollout of broadband internet to estimate its causal effect on the importing behavior of affected firms. We find that broadband expansion increases firm-level imports by around 25%. We further find that the "sub-extensive" margin (number of products and sourcing countries per firm) is the main channel of adjustment