Bank liquidity shortages during the global financial crisis of 2007–2009 led to the introduction of liquidity regulations, the impact of which has attracted the attention of academics and policymakers. In this paper, we investigate the impact of liquidity regulation on bank lending. As a setting, we use the Netherlands, where a Liquidity Balance Rule (LBR) was introduced in 2003. The LBR was imposed on Dutch banks only and did not apply to other banks operating elsewhere within the Eurozone. Using this differential regulatory treatment to overcome identification concerns and a difference-in-differences approach, we find that the LBR increased the volume of lending by Dutch banks relative to other banks located in the Eurozone. Increased equity, an inflow of retail deposits and subsequent increase in balance sheet size allowed Dutch banks to increase lending despite having to meet the LBR requirements. The LBR also affected the loan composition of Dutch banks (with corporate and retail lending increasing more than mortgage lending) and the maturity profile of loan portfolios. Our results have relevance for policymakers tasked with monitoring the impact of liquidity regulations on banks and the real economy

We present an equilibrium model of financial institutions to examine the optimal regulation of risk taking. Shareholders provide incentives for management to increase risk to excessive levels. Regulators use caps on asset risk and compensation to achieve the socially optimal risk level. This level trades off costs of risk shifting and costs of bank default. Without regulation, equilibrium risk lies above the optimal level. If information and enforcement are perfect, either policy tool (caps on asset risk or compensation) achieves the optimal risk level. If there are frictions – if enforcement is limited, if there is uncertainty about the incentives facing management and costs of risk shifting, or if regulation cannot be bank specific – welfare can be improved by employing both policy tools

We test the effect of short-term versus long-term institutional shareholding –so-called investor horizon– on bank risk-taking. We find that in contrast to banks dominated by short-term shareholders, banks with greater long-term shareholding are associated with lower risk, better stock performance, and conservative business and compensation policies. Our results imply that bank regulators should be more vigilant over the actions of banks that heavily rely on short-term shareholding

This study examines the effect of inside debt arising from CEO compensation deferral policies on shadow banking. We construct a parsimonious model that shows that increased bank inside debt leads to increased shadow banking. Using a CEO compensation deferral policy imposed on the Chinese banking industry in 2010, we empirically test our theoretical prediction on the effect of inside debt on shadow banking proxied by non-principal-guaranteed wealth management products. We find that banks that adopt the CEO compensation deferral policy exhibit higher levels of shadow banking than their counterparts and that this result is not contingent on bank size or the extent of government control. Moreover, the effect of inside debt on shadow banking is stronger in banks with higher loan-to-deposit and non-performing-loan ratios and in banks with CEO turnover, suggesting that the compensation deferral policy induces CEOs, especially newly appointed CEOs, to do more shadow banking to circumvent regulations regarding the balance-sheet risk and to boost performance

Despite the growing importance of institutional investors in global capital markets and the link between bank earnings management and financial crash risk, little is known about the role of institutional investors in mitigating bank earnings management. We conduct the first international analysis of this issue using a broad sample of banks and institutional investors. We find a negative relation between institutional ownership and bank earnings management, after controlling for the stringency of a country's bank regulations and other relevant bank and country characteristics. Additionally, institutional ownership is more negatively related to earnings management in countries with more-stringent bank disclosure requirements or when ownership is held by domestic rather than foreign institutional investors. Institutional ownership is also more negatively related to earnings management in countries in which insiders extract more private benefits or when ownership is held by institutional blockholders. Our findings have important policy implications regarding institutional investors' engagement with banks

This paper investigates whether gender-diverse bank boards can play a role in preventing costly misconduct episodes. We exploit the fines received by European banks from US regulators to reduce endogeneity issues related to supervisory and governance mechanisms. We show that greater female representation significantly reduces the frequency of misconduct fines, equivalent to savings of $7.48 million per year. Female directors are more influential when they reach a critical mass and are supported by women in leadership roles. The mechanism through which gender diversity affects board effectiveness in preventing misconduct stems from the ethicality and risk aversion of the female directors, rather than their contribution to diversity. The findings are robust to alternative model specifications, proxies for gender diversity, reverse causality, country and bank controls, and sub-sample analyses

This paper assesses the risk arising from transition toward a low-emission economy and examines its transmission channels within the financial system. The environmental dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (E -DSGE) model shows that tightening environmental regulation impairs firms' balance sheets in the short term, as it enforces firms to internalize the pollution costs, which consequentially escalates the risks facing the financial system. For the empirical analysis, we employ the Clean Air Action that the Chinese government launched in 2013 as a quasi-natural experiment. The analysis on a unique dataset containing more than one million loans indicates that the default rates of high-polluting firms rose by around 80% along their environmental policy exposure. Further analysis shows those joint equity commercial banks with lower degree of government intervention and better corporate governance structure were able to appropriately manage their exposure to transition risks, while the state-owned banks failed to factor in such risks when extending credit to the borrowers targeted by the environmental regulation

The 2013 depoliticization regulation (Rule 18) in China mandates government officials to resign from board positions in public firms, terminating firms' political connections established through these directors. Exploiting this regulation as a quasi-experiment, we document that politically connected firms increase their cash holdings 12.7% more than non-connected firms because of these resignations. This pattern is more pronounced among firms that rely more heavily on the government for external resources. Among state-owned firms, the pattern is more evident in firms that are more deeply privatized. In addition, firms that lose political ties experience a significant decline in obtaining bank loans and government subsidies, and they are also slower to adjust their cash holdings toward the optimal level. These findings underscore the role of corporate political linkages in facilitating firms' access to resources that “soften” firms' budget constraints