ABSTRACT
The theory and literature review of the previous chapter indicated that context matters for the credit-granting processes of banks; e.g. regional banking market competition, bank regulation and the size of loans influence the way banks lend. This chapter outlines the context of the study in detail. Section 3.1 describes the methodology and the process of the empirical analysis. Section 3.2 introduces the research object and describes bank regulation and firm financing in Germany. Section 3.3 clarifies the selection of banks for the case study and introduces the selected bank cases.
