Working Papers present research work by both Danmarks Nationalbank’s employees and our partners. Working Papers are primarily targeted at professionals and people with an interest in central banking research as well as economics and finance in a broader sense.

Financial stability and financial risks

Financial structures and the real effects of credit-supply shocks in Denmark 1922-2011

We examine the real effects of credit-supply shocks using a series of structural vector autoregressive models estimated on the basis on a new quarterly data set for Denmark spanning the past 90 years or so. We find no effects on the unemployment level from supply-shocks to credit from commercial/savings banks in the periods 1922-1949 and 1981-2011 even though these periods contained several cases of severe banking and financial crises. Furthermore, credit-supply shocks do not seem to explain any significant share of the volatility in the unemployment rate during these periods. We attribute these findings to the large market for mortgage-credit loans in Denmark raised through bond-financed mortgage banks combined with comprehensive government interventions to safeguard financial stability during times of crises. There might, however, be indications of real effects from credit-supply shocks in the period 1950-1980 where credit rationing and exchange controls served as important economic-policy instruments. Overall these results indicate that both the financial-system structure as well as the extent of government intervention during banking crises play a key role to the significance of real effects of credit-supply shocks. These findings must be kept in mind when modelling the role of financial intermediaries in macroeconomic models.