> I was thinking of credit rationing as the denial of credit to those who are willing to pay the offered interest rate (an excess demand for loans). It's very hard to pin down empirically, but someone may have done so.
I doubt whether you can get data that measures this directly, in the first instance because from what I know about it, almost no data is directly collected on the "total demand" for credit. It may be that some data is compiled on credit requests from banks, and possibly even the total amount of credit requests. Banks would normally record this in some way. But generally the data concerns "actual credit approved and extended", not anything like "credit requested" or credit requests refused. The utility of this latter data would only be to indicate the potential market for customer-credit, an input into marketing strategy by the banks indicating the potential credit market. I.e. a bank may wish to compare credit requests with credit actually approved, and make explicit the discrepancy. Therefore, I suspect that you could only get indirect measures, such as e.g. the number of applications for credit cards which are refused by banks and finance companies, or the number of credit requests refused by banks. But like I say, I am not aware of a statutory obligation to make this information public, other than in occasional research papers of the banks themselves. However, such information would presumably be regarded as confidential operating data by the banks, and not usually released publicly, and to my knowledge no US statute exists, which requires such information to be made public anyhow, beyond general statutory limits in the extension of credit. This is logical, because the banks want to come across as customer-friendly services, and would therefore not be likely to publish data on the loans they refuse to extend, categorised by type of ground, unless there was some specific legal requirement to do so. At most they would specify the conditions for extending credit, from which you may infer something. In which case you are left with anecdotal evidence, as reported by frustrated would-be borrowers, or possibly episodic information statements released by banks in specifying their actual lending policy (e.g. in annual reports or research papers). In other words, you would need to look at statements by specific banks concerning the current principles of their credit regime. If a would-be borrower is refused credit, he may however lodge a compliant with another authority, perhaps an ombudsman-type authority, and therefore such authorities may record appeals against the refusal by banks of credit applications. Another indirect source might be the amount of credit extended which is dishonored by borrowers, and collected by incasso enforcement agencies. Probably the best way to answer your query would be to construct a clear definition of the measure you want, on the basis of Stigler's concepts, and approach the research department of a large US bank, asking if they do actually collect data on this side of their operations, and whether they would release it for research purposes. It may be that the Federal Reserve Bank collects data of this type, which you might have access to under legislation specifying citizens rights to information from official sources. Another possibility is to approach the NBER people. Another indirect approach might be to look at where borrowers prefer to get their credit from, what the main institutional sources of credit are. If for example it is difficult to obtain credit from ordinary banks for a group of people, then they would go to other lending institutions such as finance companies taking a looser approach to credit provision. And so by looking at the trends in lending by different categories of lending institutions, you may be able to identity a shift from lending institutions with a tight credit regime to those with a looser credit regime, and compare the lending rates they offer in this regard over a period of time. Hope this helps. Jurriaan
