We investigate the impact of a new bank tax in Poland on bank lending behavior. We find that banks respond to the tax by tightening credit supply and increasing the costs of credit to the real sector. However, the responses vary across loan segments. In line with search-for-yield behavior, the tax motivates banks to shift their allocations of household credit from low-margin and relatively safe mortgage loans to higher-margin and riskier consumer loans. We find no evidence that financially weak banks are more incentivized to shift to riskier loan types. Moreover, firms that receive loans from banks more exposed to the tax experience a greater credit contraction.

We identify a new mechanism of opportunistic insider trading linked to attention-driven mispricing. Insiders are more likely to sell their company’s stock during periods of heightened retail attention and more inclined to buy when attention diminishes. The results are particularly pronounced for lottery-type stocks and firms with substantial retail ownership. We demonstrate that our findings—which relate to indicators of mispricing, retail order imbalances, and Robinhood herding episodes—extend to seasoned equity issuances and cannot be solely explained by firm fundamentals. Attention-based insider trading is less likely to result in SEC enforcement actions and persists across different regulatory regimes.