Help in a foreign land. Internationalized banks and firms’ exports

The lack of information is a relevant obstacle to the export activity of small and medium enterprises. This paper analyzes whether banks can support firms’ exports by reducing informational asymmetries about foreign markets. We exploit a large sample of Italian firms for which we merge customs data with information on their lender banks. We identify a shock exogenous to firms’ export decisions by relying on preexisting lending relationships and exploiting the acquisition of a firm’s domestic bank by an internationalized banking group. Our results show that, after the acquisition, firms have a significantly higher probability of starting export in countries where the consolidated bank has a foreign branch, which proxies for the amount of information accumulated that can be shared with client firms. Conversely, the treatment effect on the intensive margins of export is largely insignificant. Using a stylized theoretical framework, we interpret our findings as evidence of information spillovers that mainly reduce firms’ fixed entry costs in a foreign market. The analysis also shows that other channels, such as bank credit availability or trade-finance supply, are unlikely to drive our results.