Sustainability and the domestic credit market: worldwide evidence

This paper aims to uncover the cross-sectional relationship between country-level sustainability performance and the domestic lending activity of commercial banks. Considering a worldwide sample of countries, it uses publicly available sustainability scores from SolAlability Sustainable Intelligence, macroeconomic data, and banking sector data from the World Bank. The results show that the country’s sustainability performance is positively related to the amount of domestic credit granted by banks to the private sector and negatively related to the importance of nonperforming loans. Moreover, looking at the pillars that constitute the sustainability scores, this work finds evidence that social cohesion, intellectual capital, and governance are the pillars of sustainability that affect domestic lending activity. Results survive several robustness tests concerning samples, variables’ definitions, and estimation procedures. Our results suggest that policies aiming at improving a country’s sustainability contribute to domestic banking sector stability and financial development. Specifically, measures that contribute to social cohesion and solidarity, innovation and value-added industries, and the country’s governance performance, contribute to the smooth functioning of credit markets.