Banks rely on information to assess the creditworthiness of borrowers. They can secure this information in two ways: on the one hand, they can access public information on the firm from credit databases. On the other hand, they can build a relationship with the firm and secure private, more precise, information on the firm’s prospects. In this paper, we investigate what happens to the collection of private information, when banks have access to a broader scope of public information. We argue that banks can either focus on public information and reduce their collection of private information (which is costly), or see the collection of private information as strategic, giving them an advantage when allocating credit.

To settle this question, we employ an empirical approach and use a firm-level survey of 2292 firms in seven European countries in 2009. We find that when the coverage of credit registries increases, banks invest less in long-term relationship with their clients. Hence, when public information is widely available, banks do collect less private information on borrowers. This substitution only holds for firms with public information. We investigate if this reduction in the collection of private information alters firms’ access to credit, and we do not find a negative effect. The results are robust to alternative specifications and robustness tests.

银行依靠信息来评估借款人的信誉。他们可以通过两种方式来保护此信息：一方面，他们可以从信用数据库访问公司的公共信息。另一方面，他们可以与公司建立关系并获取关于公司前景的私人，更精确的信息。在本文中，我们研究了当银行可以访问更广泛的公共信息时，收集私人信息会发生什么情况。我们认为，银行既可以专注于公共信息，减少对私人信息的收集（这是昂贵的），也可以将私人信息的收集视为战略性的，从而在分配信贷时获得优势。

为了解决这个问题，我们采用了经验方法，并于2009年对七个欧洲国家/地区的2292家公司进行了公司级调查。我们发现，随着信用注册机构覆盖面的增加，银行在与客户的长期关系上的投资会减少。因此，当公共信息广泛可用时，银行收集的借款人私人信息就会减少。这种替代仅适用于具有公开信息的公司。我们调查私人信息收集的减少是否会改变企业获得信贷的机会，但我们没有发现负面影响。结果对于替代规范和鲁棒性测试是可靠的。