Project

Credit Supply Shocks and the Effect on Labour Force Composition.

Code
3G068218
Duration
01 January 2018 → 31 December 2021
Funding
Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO)
Research disciplines
No data available
Keywords
Credit
 
Project description
 

The goal of this project is to analyse the effect of banks’credit supply on employment and workforce composition; i.e., on firms’decisions to employ blue vs. white collar workers, to train their staff, or to offer long- vs. short-term contracts. We propose to estimate this effect for the Belgian economy, and to characterise heterogeneity across a variety of bank, firm, and job characteristics. Conditions in Belgium further enable us to analyse the sensitivity of our results to changes in firing costs, and their interaction with local labour supply shocks. We have access to the Belgian credit registry, i.e. to extensive loan-level information, as well as to detailed financial data for banks and firms, and to firms’social balance sheets (detailed and standardized labour force information). This allows us to isolate banks’credit supply from firms’credit demand (by studying how several banks change their lending towards the same borrower), and to analyse causal implications for employment across different types of jobs and employees. Understanding whether and how access to credit affects firms’human resource decisions provides insights into the societal value of a healthy financial sector. This offers guidance, for example on whether public funds should be used to support banks during crises, and –f so–on how they should best be allocated. Adding to our academic contribution, we therefore expect our project to be of interest to policymakers and society at large.