The Journal of Finance

The Journal of Finance publishes leading research across all the major fields of finance. It is one of the most widely cited journals in academic finance, and in all of economics. Each of the six issues per year reaches over 8,000 academics, finance professionals, libraries, and government and financial institutions around the world. The journal is the official publication of The American Finance Association, the premier academic organization devoted to the study and promotion of knowledge about financial economics.

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Alternative Information Sources and the Information Content of Bank Loans

Published: 09/01/1993   |   DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.1993.tb04765.x

RONALD BEST, HANG ZHANG

This paper examines the information content of bank loan agreements. We differentiate borrowers according to financial analysts' percentage earnings forecast errors and most recent forecast revisions. The empirical results suggest that banks rely on other indicators as initial screening devices to determine where to best deploy their evaluation and monitoring efforts. If these other indicators are reliable and signal‐improving prospects, banks do little further investigation. However, if the indicators are noisy and signal‐declining prospects, banks have incentives to expend resources to investigate the borrowers, resulting in the production of valuable information.