Knowledge that Transforms

This paper examines how bank loans evolve following unexpected deposit flows. Using bank-level U.S. commercial banks' data, we show that while large banks' lending is largely unaffected, loans at small banks significantly change after deposit shocks. Furthermore, the extent of this change among small banks depends on their exposure to off-balance-sheet liquidity risk, proxied by the level of unused commitments. Small banks with higher off-balance sheet exposures tend to extend fewer new loans following positive deposit shocks, suggesting that liquidity absorbed from the failure of other banks or market disruptions might not as easily be lent again to borrowers. Overall, these findings emphasize how off-balance-sheet risks can constrain the credit supply channel, even in the presence of liquidity surpluses.

Firms’ green technology investments are increasingly important for competitive positioning, yet their impact on long-run performance remains unclear. Using electricity capacity data for global utility firms, we construct a unique structural measure of technological greenness based on renewable versus fossil fuel physical infrastructure. We find that adopting sustainable technologies is followed by a long-run improvement in corporate fundamentals that is only partially reflected in stock prices, yielding superior returns over a multi-year horizon. These results partly reflect higher revenue growth in liberalized retail markets rather than investor sentiment, revealing a consumer-based mechanism that likely extends to competitive downstream sectors.

We survey 153 empirical studies of family firms and document 192 operational definitions representing 25 distinct definition types. These definitions can be decomposed into five recurring, codable dimensions: ownership, management, board representation, embeddedness, and succession. We relate these dimensions to economic mechanisms including agency conflicts, residual control rights, transaction costs, and dynastic control. Alternative definitions select systematically different populations and yield materially different estimates of firm performance and innovation. Definition choice is largely unrelated to the research question, except in succession studies. Ownership thresholds track private enforcement of self-dealing rules, but not statutory shareholder rights or rule of law. We conclude that the family firm is a family of related constructs rather than a single latent construct. Definitions should therefore match the family-firm construct implied by the research question, and results should be reported across alternative classification rules.