This paper analyzes the impact of rules-based bank insolvency resolution on real economic growth. Resolving insolvent banks can positively affect the real economy by overcoming moral hazard problems and improving banks’ credit allocation and monitoring. We propose a new indicator to measure the strength of ‘catharsis’, i.e., how strictly banks are resolved, and use a large firm-level dataset to test its effect. We find that a relatively stronger implementation of bank resolution rules has a statistically and economically significant positive effect on firm growth – particularly with respect to firms that are structurally more dependent on bank financing. Our findings are robust to various specifications. Investigating the transmission channels of this ‘catharsis effect’ reveals that it essentially works by means of benefiting higher quality firms (quality channel) and reallocating credit to firms that need it most (quantity channel). Additional analysis suggests that the ‘catharsis effect’ works best in banking systems that offer access to international financing because such access mitigates the potentially negative credit supply effects of liquidating insolvent banks. Taken together, our findings indicate that more attention should be focused on developing incentive-compatible bank resolution regimes.

We propose a framework for testing the effects of changes in bank resolution regimes on bank behavior. By exploiting the differential relevance of recent changes in U.S. bank resolution (i.e., the introduction of the Orderly Liquidation Authority, OLA) for different types of banks, we are able to simulate a quasi-natural experiment using a difference-in-difference framework. We find that banks that are more affected by the introduction of the OLA (1) significantly decrease their overall risk-taking and (2) shift their loan origination toward lower risk, indicating the general effectiveness of the regime change. This effect, however, does (3) not hold for the largest and most systemically important banks. Hence, the introduction of the OLA in the U.S. alone does not appear to have solved the too-big-to-fail problem and might need to be complemented with other measures to limit financial institutions’ risk-taking.

European banks are exposed to a substantial amount of risky sovereign debt. “Missing capital” in the banking system resulting from the zero-risk weight exemption for European sovereign debt amplifies the co-movement between sovereign CDS spreads and facilitates cross-border crisis spillovers. Risks spill over from risky peripheral sovereigns to safer core countries, but not in the opposite direction nor for exposures to countries not exempted from risk-weighting. Unfunded non-domestic sovereign bond exposures primarily affect CDS spreads of non-GIIPS banks, while domestic sovereign-to-bank linkages are particularly important for GIIPS banks. Spillovers are attenuated when banks fund their sovereign bond exposures with capital.