Knowledge that Transforms

We examine the long-lasting effects of the 2007 real estate price collapse on small business credit supply. Banks affected by the decline in real estate prices systematically contracted their credit to small firms. At the same time, regional and local banks, many of which were unaffected by the initial shock, increased small business lending to nearby borrowers and opportunistically expanded their branch networks, making gains in market share that persisted for the following decade. Although the net effect of the contraction in credit was negative, we show that opportunistic expansion tied to permanent market changes is an important offsetting force that dampened the negative effect on small firms during the GFC and its aftermath.

Larger bonds offer greater liquidity, which should reduce their yields. A simple way for firms to reduce financing costs is to sell bonds with large face values. We find that mega-bonds are more liquid than smaller bonds. However, offering yield spreads on mega-bonds are not lower and are higher than spreads of bonds issued by similar companies. The discount applied to large new issues is consistent with price pressure effects that are also present in the secondary market prices of the issuing firm's existing bonds. Our results suggest a hidden cost to issuing very liquid bonds.

We find that chief executive officers and chief financial officers exert significant individual effects on bank risk. Manager transitions, including transitions generated by plausibly exogenous manager departures, lead to abnormally large changes in bank risk. We demonstrate that the effects of managers on bank risk are sizable and manager-specific. The effects are also partly anticipated by the board because they are reflected in managers’ pay. However, wide-ranging personal attributes, including biographical, experience, and compensation data, only explain a small share of managers’ impact on bank risk. This implies that attempts to rein in bank risk-taking by targeting manager characteristics will be challenging for investors and regulators.

We use a matching method that constructs synthetic counterfactual states to identify the channels that link bank deregulation to financial integration, and thereby to economic growth. We document a positive, but conditional, effect of financial integration on economic growth. We explore the heterogeneous effects of financial integration across states depending on the capital mobility in each state. Our results reveal a correlation between financial integration and subsequent banking sector changes related to an expansion in loan recipients. We show that financial integration democratizes lending and spurs economic growth.

Using data of bank loans to Greek firms during the Greek crisis we provide evidence that affiliated firms, having access to the internal capital markets of their associated group, are less likely to default on their loans. Furthermore, banks require lower loan collateral coverage from affiliated firms and are less likely to downgrade the affiliates’ credit profile. Finally, banks are more likely to show forbearance to affiliated firms with non-performing loans. The results are consistent with the view that banks manage their relationships with firms in a business group jointly, as opposed to viewing each firm as an independent entity. Our findings also suggest that the value of risk sharing through internal capital markets increases when external financing is scarce.

Poor transparency of asset-backed securities (ABS) exacerbated the latest subprime lending crisis. In response, the European Central Bank introduced the ABS loan-level reporting initiative, obliging originators to disclose quarterly loan-by-loan information. However, does this increase in transparency alleviate the agency problems inherent in securitization? To answer this question, we examine a novel dataset of 107 ABS pools that are backed by more than 2.8 million loans for small and medium-sized enterprises from the first securitization repository in Europe. The results show that the increase in transparency indeed has valuable effects for investors, inducing originators to improve pool performance and diversification for existing as well as newly issued ABS. These effects persist for a large set of control variables and a broad variety of robustness tests.

Using a novel dataset of leveraged loan trades executed by managers of collateralized loan obligations (CLOs), we document the importance of “active loan trades” – trades executed at a manager’s discretion. More active trading increases the returns to CLO equity investors, lowers collateral portfolio default rates, and increases the manager’s chances of closing a new deal. Examining the observed loan trades, we find that more active CLOs trade at better prices than less active CLOs, selling leveraged loans earlier and before they get downgraded. Our findings suggest that more active CLOs are better at anticipating deteriorations in loan credit quality.

We estimate the effects of the liquidity coverage ratio (LCR), a liquidity requirement for banks, on the tenders that banks submit in Term Deposit Facility operations, a Federal Reserve tool created to manage the quantity of central bank reserves. We identify these effects using variation in LCR requirements across banks and a change over time that allowed term deposits to count toward the LCR. Banks subject to the LCR submit tenders more often and submit larger tenders than exempt banks when term deposits qualify for the LCR. These results suggest that liquidity regulation affects bank demand in monetary policy operations.

I develop a normative theory of political influence on bank lending and capital structure. Legislators want banks to make politically-favored loans that reduce bank profits but generate social or political benefits. The regulator uses asset-choice regulation and capital requirements to induce the lending desired by legislators. There are four main results. First, if regulators dislike bank fragility, then credit-allocation regulation should be accompanied by higher capital requirements. Second, banks will resist higher capital requirements, which will be lower when banks have more bargaining power. Third, when politics matters more in bank regulation, the banking sector is larger and more competitive, with higher capital requirements. Fourth, the optimal reporting mechanism, in which banks report their privately-known profitability and the regulator endogenously determines capital requirements and stringency of credit-allocation regulation in response, shows that political influence is stronger when banks are more profitable.

This paper uses issuance-level data to study how equity capital inflows that enter emerging market economies affect equity issuance and corporate investment. It shows that foreign inflows are strongly correlated with country-level issuance. The relation especially reflects the behavior of large firms. To identify supply-side shocks, capital inflows into each country are instrumented with exogenous changes in other countries’ attractiveness to foreign investors. Shifts in the supply of foreign capital are important drivers of increased equity inflows. Instrumented contemporaneous and lagged capital inflows lead large firms to raise new equity, which they use to fund investment.