Knowledge that Transforms

Using a novel dataset that combines information on customer-supplier trade relationships with information on firm-bank lending relationships, we show that common banks that lend to firms at both ends of a trade link grow and strengthen such trade relationships. To establish causality, we use bank mergers, which generate exogenous variations in the presence of common banks, and show that common bank relationships between customers and suppliers increase trade relationships by 49.6%. We find that the role of a common bank is greater when it is more informed and when supply chains suffer from larger information and holdup problems. We also document that suppliers with common banks face lower spillover risks from a distressed customer. Overall, our findings show the unique role of banks in driving inter-firm growth and investment by mitigating information and holdup problems, which arguably leads to greater economic growth.

We challenge the theorized trade-off between risk management and investment due to collateral constraints. We compile a unique dataset of derivative transactions and collateral for U.S. public firms. Exploiting exogenous variation in cash-collateral, we observe significant effects on hedging but no impact on investment. Variations in PPE-collateral, instead, impact investment but show no association with hedging. Our findings suggest that a firm’s assets should not be seen as interchangeable; they rather play distinct roles in the collateralization process.

We investigate whether pre-publication revisions of bank financial statements contain forward-looking information about bank risk. Using 7.4 million observations of monthly financial reports from all banks in Brazil during 2007–2019, we show that 78 % of all revisions occur before the publication of these statements. The frequency, missing of reporting deadlines, and severity of revisions are positively related to future bank risk. Using machine learning techniques, we provide evidence on mechanisms through which revisions affect bank risk. Our findings suggest that private information about pre-publication revisions is useful for supervisors to monitor banks.

This paper studies whether financing constraints adversely affect renters by reducing maintenance. Consistent with a sensitivity of maintenance to financial resources, housing code violations increased after a change in the law that effectively decreased cash flows available to maintain some rent-stabilized buildings in New York City. The effect is most severe when financing constraints are present. Moreover, results of panel regressions using a dataset of 45 cities obtained with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests are consistent with a hypothesis that buildings with higher LTV ratio mortgages have more code violations. Together, the results provide evidence that financing constraints reduce maintenance, an outcome that exacerbates the unintended consequences of rent control.

We study the effects of PPP loans on business competition. We start by introducing temporary cash subsidies into a model of monopolistic competition with differentiated products and heterogeneous production costs. We test the predictions of our model in a sample of U.S. airport hotels for which we observe daily demand, prices, output, and profits. Consistent with model predictions, less profitable businesses were more likely to apply for PPP loans. Businesses with active PPP loans reduced prices, boosting output and profits relative to non-PPP competitors. Those relative differences were reversed once PPP loans expired. We calculate that, for every dollar of PPP subsidies, PPP hotels earned 72.4 cents in extra profits and non-PPP competitors lost 71.4 cents in aggregate. Our results suggest that the PPP initiative distorted competition, imposing significant costs on businesses that chose to forgo these loans.

The high social costs of financial crises imply that economists, policymakers, businesses, and households have a tremendous incentive to understand, and try to prevent them. And yet, so far we have failed to learn how to avoid them. In this article, we take a novel approach to studying financial crises. We first build ten case studies of financial crises that stretch over two millennia, and then consider their salient points of differences and commonalities. We see this as the beginning of developing a useful taxonomy of crises – an understanding of the most important factors that reappear across the many examples, which also allows (as in any taxonomy) some examples to be more similar to each other than others. From the perspective of our review of the ten crises, we consider the question of why it has proven so difficult to learn from past crises to avoid future ones.

Financial intermediation has distinct value from transforming financial claims to create liquidity and mitigate risks. However, research and policy competition analyses often neglect this value or minimally account for it. We review findings to better incorporate this value. We suggest shifting the mix of individual services analyzed to better represent the distinct value, focusing more on topics closely aligned with the distinct value concept beyond individual services, and accounting for the multimarket nature of financial intermediation. We recommend attention on future competition with digital FinTech, BigTech, and DeFi firms and policies to best preserve the distinct value of financial intermediation.

Buy-and-hedge intermediaries are important investors in the convertible bond market as they intermediate between firms that require capital quickly and investors requiring time to assess the security. Their strategy requires them to manage the trade-offs involved with the costs and benefits of hedging. We find that prices of convertible securities reflect the costs that intermediaries incur when managing their positions. Especially cross-sectional and within-bond variation of intermediaries’ loan costs helps explain variation in convertible bond underpricing.

This study investigates inter-generational transmissions of parental bankruptcy shock on children's financial behavior in adulthood. Our results show that younger children who were 9 years or below when their parents declared bankruptcy were 2–3 % points less likely to declare bankruptcy than their older siblings who were 10 years and older when the parents’ bankruptcy event occurred. We rule out alternative hypotheses, including birth order, cohort effects, and truncated sample bias. We find corroborative evidence for the “parent socialization” channel, where bankrupt parents, through interactions with children during childhood years, influence their financial behavior and reduce the risks of their children repeating the same mistakes in adulthood.

This paper investigates both the magnitude and the drivers of bank window dressing behavior in euro-denominated repo markets. Using a confidential transaction-level data set, our analysis illustrates that banks engineer an economically sizeable contraction in their repo transactions around regulatory reporting dates. We establish a causal link between these reductions and banks’ incentives to window dress and document the role of the leverage ratio and the G-SIB framework as the most relevant drivers of window dressing behavior. Our findings suggest that regulatory action is warranted to limit banks’ ability to window dress.