Publications

(Order: Most recent first) 


We examine how a policy change by the FDIC, which unexpectedly exempted some banks, affects corporate lending via changes in reserves during the Quantitative Easing (QE) era. To address the endogeneity of reserves, we use a unique hand-collected dataset on the bank's share of exemption from the policy shift, and differentiate between loan demand and loan supply. We find important differences in loan-level outcomes, attributed to the heterogeneous impact of the new regulation on the net return on holding reserves. The effectiveness of the risk-taking channel is significantly weaker for banks with larger exemption shares and this has real effects in terms of borrowers' leverage, growth, and return on assets.

The quality of bank lending is increasingly viewed as a force driving the buildup and unfolding of crises. In a dynamic general equilibrium model, we show that banks' access to liquidity and the values of loan portfolios govern banks' incentives and effectiveness in producing information on loans. Consistent with granular loan-level evidence from U.S. banks, the calibrated model predicts that loan due diligence deteriorates during expansions and intensifies during contractions. This countercyclicality attenuates investment and output effects of liquidity shocks but can moderately amplify loan quality shocks. Credit policies may dilute stabilizing effects of due diligence. 

This paper investigates whether foreign banks help mitigate the effects of domestic liquidity shocks by exploiting a policy-induced shock to the U.S. wholesale market for liquidity and matched bank-syndicated loan data. We find that, following the 2011 Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) regulatory change on the cost of wholesale liquidity, foreign banks, which faced a relatively positive liquidity shock, engaged in liquidity hoarding, accumulating more reserves, but did not expand their lending. These responses are more pronounced for foreign banks affiliated with complex global bank holding companies and whose parent banking systems experienced distress at the moment of the shock.

This paper explores the main forces impacting diversity and the role of women at senior management and board level in finance. In addition, it offers a synopsis of selected research examining the board composition, corporate social responsibility and external corporate governance. We focus mainly on empirical papers that employ quasi-natural experiments and textual analysis to confirm the interdisciplinary nature of diversity. Further, we identify priorities for future research that can advance our understanding on this research area, and the broader field of financial studies, encompassing the growing interest in the boundaries between the economic, the psychological and the social.

We examine the relationship between female board representation and the cost of lending, using a dataset that contains 13,714 loans originated by 386 banks matched with 2,432 non-financial firms over the period 1999 to 2013. We find that firms with female directors command lower loan spreads. In addition, female independent directors have a stronger impact on lowering spreads compared to female directors' other attributes. However, as firms build relationships with their lenders this effect becomes less potent. Finally, when we introduce firm-level heterogeneity we document that changes in gender diversity exert a stronger impact on the cost of lending in the case of financially constrained firms, especially for relationship borrowers.

Regulatory enforcement actions for non-compliance with laws and regulations may have adverse reputational effects for punished banks acting as lead arrangers in loan syndicates, thereby disincentivizing participants from co-financing and forcing the lead arrangers to increase their own shares of the loans. Our empirical evidence based on hand-collected enforcement action data enacted from 2001 through 2010 in the U.S. and on matched syndicated loan-level data strongly supports this conjecture. The required share increases by lead arrangers can be mitigated by extending loan guarantees, performance pricing provisions, and covenants.

By adjusting lending, banks can smooth the macroeconomic impact of deposit fluctuations. This may however lead to extended periods of disproportionately high lending relative to deposit intake and, under certain conditions, to accumulation of risk in the banking system. Using bank-level data for 8,477 banks in 129 countries for the 24-year period from 1992 to 2015, we examine how banks' market power and other characteristics may contribute to smoothing or amplification of shocks and to the accumulation of risk. We find that the higher their market power the lower is the growth rate of lending relative to deposits. As a result, in periods of falling deposits higher market power for the average bank is associated with a greater fall in lending, consistent with amplification of adverse effects during relatively bad times. Strikingly, at very high levels of market power there is a threshold past which the effect of market power on the growth rate of lending relative to deposits turns positive so that superpower banks may contribute to smoothing of adverse effects when deposits are falling. In periods of rising deposits, however, such banks are more likely to lead to amplification and accumulation of risk in the economy. 

 Does market power of banks affect firm performance? To answer this question we examine 25,236 syndicated loan facilities granted between 2000 and 2010 by 296 banks to 9,029 US non-financial firms. Accounting for both observed and unobserved bank and firm heterogeneity, we find that firms that were recently poorly performing obtain loans from banks with more market power. However, in the year after loan origination market power positively affects firm performance, but only if it is not too high. Our estimates thus suggest that bank market power can facilitate access to credit by poorly-performing firms, yet at the same time also boosts the performance of the firms that obtain credit .

The nexus between ownership and competition in the banking sector is a major concern to policymakers around the world but one that is rarely comprehensively examined. For 131 countries and 13 years we match bank ownership with over 50,000 bank-year estimates of individual bank market power. We find that ownership does not explain market power at the individual bank level. However, at the country level, foreign bank ownership has a positive and significant impact on market power mainly because foreign banks enter through mergers or acquisitions and not through greenfield investments. The observed increases in market power primarily originate from decreases in the marginal cost.

This paper exploits a data set on bank-firm relationships based on syndicated loan deals to examine the effect of banks’ credit risk and capital on firms’ risk and performance. Our data set is a multilevel cross-section, which essentially allows controlling for all bank and firm characteristics through respective fixed effects, thus avoiding concerns regarding omitted variables. We find that banks with higher credit risk are associated with more risky firms, with lower profitability and market value. In turn, we find that banks with higher risk-weighted capital ratios lend to riskier firms with less market value. Our results are indicative of a strong adverse selection mechanism and highlight the need to monitor the risky banks more closely, especially as we consider large and influential syndicated loan deals

We estimate the degree of competition in the banking sectors of 148 countries over the period 1997-2010 using three methods: the Lerner index, the adjusted Lerner index, and the profit elasticity. Marginal cost estimates required for all methods are obtained using a flexible semi-parametric methodology. All three indices show that competitive conditions in banking deteriorated during the period 1997-2006, improved until 2008, and deteriorated again thereafter. Levels of competition differ across regions and income groups, but there is gradual convergence over time. Banking system is less competitive in sub-Saharan Africa and low income countries and more competitive in Europe and Central and South Asia and OECD countries.


Book chapter

This book chapter analyzes the effects of market power on loan growth using bank-level data from 131 countries over the period 1997–2010.