The Credit Constraint: Perception of Banks' Willingness to Provide Credit and Company-specific Credit Market Experience

Since 2003, the German companies have been regularly queried in the ifo Business Survey about banks' willingness to provide loans. The responses to this "credit question" are used both for the formation of macroeconomic indicators such as the "Credit Constraint" and for the analysis of microdata, i.e. for observations at the level of the individual company. However, it is unclear whether the responses of a company reflect its own situation or the sector-specific, regional or even macroeconomic trends. For this reason, since March 2017 the "credit question" has been altered. Companies are explicitly asked whether they have need of credit and how they assess the behaviour of banks in these credit negotiations.