We put our hypothesis very straightforward, considering the euro area and the whole European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) banking sector. The paper’s central hypothesis that capital adequacy of the EMU banking sector influenced credit growth and activities in the nonfinancial sector was confirmed; however, not entirely in all respects expected. We proved that, in general, there was a dependency between banks’ capital adequacy and loan growth in the euro area for the observed period Q1 1999 until Q1 2022; yet the correlation coefficient of 0.48 shows a middle positive relationship of variables. At the same time, more than 23% of loans’ variability might be explained by variability in capital adequacy. All significance tests proved our results valid. Nevertheless, we saw two very different and slightly controversial dynamics in loan growth and capital ratio during the observed period. Therefore, we were forced to separately continue with an analysis for both time frames: the period before the big financial and economic crisis (Q1 1999 - Q4 2008) and the period starting with the big financial and economic crisis (Q1 2009 - Q12022). The linear regression in the pre-crisis period was almost flat. In contrast, a simple linear regression during the crisis showed a relatively high negative correlation at around -0.6. Therefore, the sub-hypothesis that higher capital adequacy resulted in negative credit growth was supported for the crisis period. We believe that this paper offers the main originality and scientific contribution for this particular finding within the data time series deployment.

中文翻译：

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EMU 银行业的信贷增长是否遵循其资本充足率？1

考虑到欧元区和整个欧洲经济与货币联盟 (EMU) 银行业，我们的假设非常简单。该论文的中心假设，即 EMU 银行部门的资本充足率影响非金融部门的信贷增长和活动，得到了证实；然而，并非在所有方面都完全符合预期。我们证明，总体而言，在 1999 年第一季度至 2022 年第一季度的观察期内，欧元区银行的资本充足率与贷款增长之间存在依赖关系；然而 0.48 的相关系数表明变量之间存在中等正相关关系。同时，超过 23% 的贷款波动可能是由资本充足率的波动来解释的。所有显着性检验都证明我们的结果是有效的。尽管如此，在观察期间，我们在贷款增长和资本比率方面看到了两种截然不同且略有争议的动态。因此，我们不得不分别继续分析两个时间框架：大金融和经济危机之前的时期（1999 年第一季度 - 2008 年第四季度）和大金融和经济危机开始的时期（2009 年第一季度 - 2022 年第一季度）。危机前的线性回归几乎持平。相比之下，危机期间的简单线性回归显示出相对较高的负相关性，约为 -0.6。因此，较高的资本充足率导致信贷负增长的子假设在危机期间得到支持。我们相信本文为数据时间序列部署中的这一特定发现提供了主要的原创性和科学贡献。