This paper explores the impact of cross-border capital flows on bank lending volumes and risk. Employing bank-level data from the euro area, we show that capital inflows are associated with higher bank credit supply and lower average loan quality. By showing that the lending patterns of smaller domestic banks are also affected, we present evidence that the impact of international capital flows is not limited to large banks with international exposure. Nevertheless, the observed effects are stronger for large banks as well as for banks with low levels of capitalisation, suggesting that agency issues reinforce the link between capital flows and bank lending.

Empirical research on the effect of bank competition on bank risk has so far produced very inconclusive results. In this paper we revisit this long-standing debate and propose a new empirical approach that is concentrated on the relationship between deposit market competition and bank risk. This approach closely follows the traditional theoretical views of the competition and risk relationship and is focused on testing the classical moral hazard problem of the bank: deposit market competition raises the optimal risk choice of the bank by raising the costs of bank liabilities. Since banks can substitute between retail and wholesale funding, we relate deposit market competition to wholesale market conditions and examine their joint effect on the risk of bank assets. The analysis is based on a unique, comprehensive dataset, which combines retail deposit rate data with data on bank characteristics and data on local deposit market features for a sample of 589 US banks. Our results support the notion of a risk-enhancing effect of deposit market competition.

This paper examines the relationship between central bank funding and credit risk-taking. Employing bank-firm-level data from the German credit registry during 2009:Q1-2014:Q4, we find that banks borrowing from the central bank rebalance their portfolios towards ex-ante riskier firms. We further establish that this effect is driven by the ECB’s maturity extensions and that the risk-taking sensitivity of banks borrowing from the ECB is independent of idiosyncratic bank characteristics. Finally, we show that these shifts in bank lending are associated with an increase in firm-level investment and employment, but also with a deterioration of bank balance sheet quality in the following year.