Using a sample of 27 countries between 1990 and 2014, we find that banks charge higher interest rates and adjust other contractual features of their loans when lending to firms facing more stringent environmental regulations. Our evidence suggests that lenders’ concerns about the increase in environmental liabilities resulting from regulations is driving the results. Specifically, we show that firms facing such regulations have fewer participants in their loan syndicates, higher bankruptcy risk, and lower credit ratings, despite reducing their leverage. Overall, our results indicate that the observed higher loan spread is the result of environmentally sensitive lending practices by banks

We study retail deposit withdrawals from commercial banks that were differentially exposed to distress during the 2007–2009 financial crisis. We show that the propensity of clients to withdraw deposits increases with the severity of bank distress. However, an exclusive pre-crisis bank-client relationship eliminates withdrawal risk. The mechanism through which strong bank-client relationships mitigate withdrawal risk relates to the transaction costs of switching accounts rather than informational rents or differentiated services. Our findings provide empirical support to the Basel III liquidity regulations that emphasize the role of well-established client relationships for the stability of bank funding

We survey 149 leading academic researchers on bank capital regulation. The median (average) respondent prefers a 10% (15%) minimum non-risk-weighted equity-to-assets ratio, which is considerably higher than the current requirement. North Americans prefer a significantly higher equity-to-assets ratio than Europeans. We find substantial support for the new forms of regulation introduced in Basel III, such as liquidity requirements. Views are most dispersed regarding the use of hybrid assets and bail-inable debt in capital regulation. 70% of experts would support an additional market-based capital requirement. When investigating factors driving capital requirement preferences, we find that the typical expert believes a five percentage points increase in capital requirements would “probably decrease” both the likelihood and social cost of a crisis with “minimal to no change” to loan volumes and economic activity. The best predictor of capital requirement preference is how strongly an expert believes that higher capital requirements would increase the cost of bank lending

Are government guarantees or financial regulation a more effective way to prevent banking crises? I study this question in the presence of a negative feedback loop between the fiscal position of the government and the health of the banking sector. I construct a model of financial intermediation in which the government issues, and may default on, debt. Banks hold some of this debt, which ties their health to that of the government. The government's tax revenue, in turn, depends on the quantity of investment that banks are able to finance. I compare the effectiveness of government guarantees, liquidity regulation, and a combination of these policies in preventing self-fulfilling bank runs. In some cases, a combination of the two policies is needed to prevent a run. In other cases, liquidity regulation alone is effective and adding guarantees would make the financial system fragile

Credit rationing by lending institutions has been the subject of much research in recent decades. Although there are some empirical indications, there is little theoretical justification about how various forms of credit rationing manifest themselves in credit markets. Understanding how these forms emerge in the market is particularly important for regulators in charge of monetary policy who play a crucial role in attaining economic and financial stability during crises and pandemics. This study first offers a theoretical decomposition of credit rationing by showing that three forms of equilibrium credit rationing can exist in the presence of contract heterogeneity. It then provides empirical evidence on each of the three rationing forms using micro-level data on small- and medium-sized enterprises collected by the European Central Bank over the period 2009–2019