We analyze government interventions in the eurozone banking sector during the 2008–2009 financial crisis. Using a novel data set, we document that fiscally constrained governments “kicked the can down the road” by providing banks with guarantees instead of fully-fledged recapitalizations. We econometrically address the endogeneity associated with bailout decisions in identifying their consequences. We find that forbearance prompted undercapitalized banks to shift their assets from loans to risky sovereign debt and engage in zombie lending, resulting in weaker credit supply, elevated risk in the banking sector, and, eventually, a greater reliance on liquidity support from the European Central Bank.

We study how terminated correspondent banking relationships affect international trade. Drawing on firm-level export data from emerging Europe, we show that when local banks lose access to correspondent services, their corporate clients, especially small- and medium-sized enterprises, experience significant export declines. Firms only partially offset lost exports with higher domestic sales, resulting in lower total revenues and employment. Other firms cease operations entirely. These firm-level impacts aggregate to lower product-level exports from countries more exposed to correspondent bank retrenchment.