Knowledge that Transforms

Using U.S. banking data between 1993 and 2014, this paper investigates the relationship between CEO optimism and bank liquidity creation. It finds that banks with optimistic CEOs create more liquidity over the entire sample period. In addition, the positive effect of CEO optimism on liquidity creation became stronger during the subprime crisis of 2007‒2009, and this stronger effect was mainly driven by banks with high capital ratios and large banks. These results imply that CEO optimism is likely to encourage banks to create liquidity, especially during banking crises. The results presented in this paper hold when subjected to various robustness checks.

We test whether adverse changes to banks’ market valuations during the financial and sovereign debt crises affected firms’ real decisions. Using new data linking over 5000 non-financial Italian firms to their bank(s), we find that increases in banks’ CDS spreads, and decreases in their equity valuations, resulted in lower investment, employment, and bank debt for younger and smaller firms. These effects dominate those of banks’ balance-sheet variables. Moreover, CDS spreads matter more than equity valuations. Finally, higher CDS spreads led to lower aggregate investment and employment, and to less efficient resource allocations, especially during the sovereign debt crisis.

The U.S. bank stress tests aim to improve financial system stability. However, they may also affect bank credit supply. We formulate and test opposing hypotheses about these effects. Our findings are consistent with the Risk Management Hypothesis, under which stress-tested banks reduce credit supply−particularly to relatively risky borrowers−to decrease their credit risk. The findings do not support the Moral Hazard Hypothesis, in which these banks expand credit supply−particularly to relatively risky borrowers that pay high spreads−increasing their risk. Results are generally stronger for safer banks, banks that passed the stress tests, and the earlier stress tests.

We study the effect of changes to bank-specific capital requirements on mortgage loans with a new loan-level dataset containing all new mortgages issued in the UK between 2005Q2 and 2007Q2. We find that a rise of a 100 basis points in capital requirements leads to a 4% decline in individual mortgage loan size. Borrowers with an impaired credit history (verified income) are not (most) affected. This is consistent with the origination of riskier loans to grow capital by raising retained earnings. We then examine the interaction of capital requirements and monetary policy. This suggests that a monetary policy tightening may mitigate the loan contraction associated with higher capital requirements, as maturity transformation allows the affected bank to profit from a steeper yield curve and raise capital through retained earnings. Overall, our findings in this paper indicate that retained earnings are an important channel of adjustment to capital requirements.

We show that banks’ risk exposure in one asset category affects how they report regulatory risk weights for another asset category. Specifically, banks report lower credit risk weights for their loan portfolio when they face higher risk exposure in their trading book. This relationship is especially strong for banks that have binding regulatory capital constraints. Our results suggest the existence of incentive spillovers across different risk categories. We relate this behavior to the discretion inherent in internal ratings-based models which these banks use to assess risk. These findings imply that supervision should include a comprehensive view of different bank risk dimensions.

This paper studies how interstate banking deregulation affects credit supply, focusing on distinguishing the balance sheet and bank competition channels. Using a regression discontinuity design, I find that interstate banking deregulation affects credit supply, not only by legally impacted commercial banks, but also by non-legally impacted non-bank lenders. Controlling for lender-year fixed effects to isolate the balance sheet effect, I find that credit supply by the same lender varies with interstate banking restrictions in different states. Overall, the results suggest that the impact of interstate banking deregulation is mostly driven by the bank competition channel.

The introduction of the SME Supporting Factor (SF) allows banks to reduce capital requirements for credit risk on exposures to SME. This means that banks can free up capital resources that can be redeployed in the form of new loans. Our study documents that the SF alleviates credit rationing for medium-sized firms that are eligible for the application of the SF but not for micro/small firms. These results suggest that European banks were aware of this policy measure and optimized both their regulatory capital and their credit exposures by granting loans to the medium-sized firms, which are safer than micro/small firms.

Using a broad range of uncertainty measures, we show that uncertainty dramatically slows down firms’ adjustments toward their optimal capital structure. At the upper bound, the estimated speed of leverage adjustments almost halves when uncertainty is high. High quality institutions (common law legal origin, more disclosure to congress and/or to the public, and higher public sector ethics) and presidential political systems offset some of the adverse effects of uncertainty on leverage adjustments. The financial crisis has altered the relationships among uncertainty, adjustment speeds, and a country's institutions; more so for countries with weak institutions and parliamentary systems.

We investigate the U.S. experience with macroprudential policies by studying the interagency guidance on leveraged lending. We find that the guidance primarily impacted large, closely supervised banks, but only after supervisors issued important clarifications. It also triggered a migration of leveraged lending to nonbanks. While we do not find that nonbanks use more lax lending policies than banks, we unveil important evidence that nonbanks increased bank borrowing following the guidance, possibly to finance their growing leveraged lending. The guidance was effective at reducing banks’ leveraged lending activity, but it is less clear whether it accomplished its broader goal of reducing the risk that these loans pose for the stability of the financial system. Our findings highlight the importance of supervisory monitoring for macroprudential policy goals, and the challenge that the revolving door of risk poses to the effectiveness of macroprudential regulations.