The impact of lending relationship on risk premium and credit availability: Evidence from Tunisia

This paper presents empirical evidence from a representative sample of Tunisian firms on the importance of loan officers in the production of 'soft information' by opposition of 'hard' information, testing whether firm borrowers have a relationship with their bank or with their loan officer. To establish the main determinants of the credit conditions in Tunisia, our study is based on a sample of 297 companies, dealing with a Tunisian bank from 1998 to 2002. The main finding of this paper is that the risk premium depends only on the hard information proxies. However, the availability of credit seems related to the interaction between the loan officer and the customer through the collection of'soft' information. Copyright © 2009 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.