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BIMSA Digital Economy Lab Seminar
BIMSA Digital Economy Lab Seminar
Age Will Tell: Bank Lending Decisions for Small Businesses
Age Will Tell: Bank Lending Decisions for Small Businesses
Organizers
Speaker
Kuibi Song
Time
Friday, March 27, 2026 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Venue
A3-2-303
Online
Zoom 435 529 7909
(BIMSA)
Abstract
We provide both theoretical and empirical analyses of the impact of life-cycle information frictions on bank lending decisions. We start with a model that integrates the learning effects associated with firms' age into banks' screening processes. Our model offers a novel perspective, suggesting that banks' reluctance to provide loans to start-ups stems from a lack of incentives to intensely screen these firms. In addition, mitigating information frictions, as predicted by the model, would benefit young firms more. Using a firm-level dataset of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Zhejiang Province, we examine the model's predictions through the Bank-Tax-Interaction policy shock, which aims to mitigate information friction between banks and SME applicants. Empirical results show that the project particularly benefits younger SMEs, with an average increase of 0.43 percentage points in bank loan accessibility and a 4.67% increase in the bank loan amount for each year decrease in a firm's age.
Speaker Intro
Kuibi Song is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Modern Finance Research Institute of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the School of Economics at Peking University. His research focuses on international finance and monetary policy, and his work has been published in leading Chinese academic journals, including Journal of Financial Research.