Production and Financial Networks in Interplay: Crisis Evidence from Supplier-Customer and Credit Registers

We show that bank credit shocks to firms propagate upstream and downstream along the production network, with stronger effects for upstream than downstream propagation. Our identification strategy relies on: (i) administrative datasets from Spain on supplier-customer transactions and bank loans; (ii) a standard operationalization of bank credit-supply shocks during the Global Financial Crisis; and (iii) a general equilibrium model of an interfirm production network economy with financial frictions that is structurally estimated. Our results indicate that the network propagation leads to a 50% increase in the aggregate effects of bank credit supply shocks on GDP growth, with equally important first-order versus higher-order network effects.