We link senior banks loan officers' responses regarding their decisions for bank credit standards, from successive surveys from the European Bank Lending Survey to investigate two important issues. First, we examine the relationship between bank credit standards (CS) and perceived and actual financial crisis. Second, we investigate whether the notion of the self-fulfilling prophecy is applicable in the case of the 2008 global financial crisis. In particular, the second main research question that we try to answer is whether the perceived crisis (as implied by the Google search query "financial crisis") contributed to the acceleration of the outburst of the actual crisis. We find that both perceived and actual financial crisis affect senior bank loan officers' credit standards, with the actual crisis having the greatest impact. These results are consistent both in the short and in the long run. Finally, by putting forward a binary choice model we find sufficient evidence to support the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy notion.

PurposeThis study investigates which expectation formation mechanism governs Eurozone firms regarding their expectations on external finance availability.Design/methodology/approachIn this study, we link consecutive surveys from the Survey on the Access to Finance of Enterprises to bring new evidence on how non-financial corporations shape their expectations on external finance availability.FindingsIn line with the past literature, we demonstrate that the data reject the Rational Expectations hypothesis, and we find evidence in favor of the Adaptive Expectation mechanism.Originality/valueThis is the first study studying firms' expectations of external finance availability, implementing survey data of firms' expectations from the SAFE database on a country level. The formation of firm expectations is vital in directing policymakers in designing appropriate monetary policies, as both the employment and inflation targets of central banks around the world are highly dependent on the firm-level decision process.

How do firm-specific shocks contribute to large economic downturns associated with financial crises? Using a large and representative dataset on Greek firms covering all sectors of the economy over the period 2000-2014, we find that the contribution of firm-specific shocks to the volatility of aggregate sales growth increased substantially (about 30%) during the Greek financial crisis and dominated the contribution of macro-economic and sectoral shocks. We also find that, throughout the sample period, inter-firm linkages are two and a half times as important as the direct effect of firm shocks in driving aggregate fluctuations. However, during the financial crisis, the Greek economy became more granular, and the direct effect of firm-specific shocks had increased importance in driving aggregate volatility.

No abstract