Relationship lending and employment decisions in firms’ bad times

Using firm-level survey information, we investigate whether relationship lending affects firms' employment decisions when they experience negative shocks on sales. We find that firms maintaining long-lasting relationships with their main bank show a significantly lower sensitivity of employment growth rate to shocks in sales. This result is robust to measurement issues and to an instrumental variable strategy, and is stronger for young, small, human-capital-intensive firms. Our findings indicate that relationship lending acts as an insurance for firms' employees against adverse sales fluctuations, especially for firms whose internal workforce is more valuable and is thus substitutable at larger costs.