Exploring bank-level data from a small open economy, we present evidence that global funding conditions limit the effectiveness of domestic monetary policy in terms of shaping both the volume and the riskiness of bank lending. We show that more favorable global funding conditions associated with a local currency appreciation encourage banks to increase lending, leverage up, take more risks, and thus insulate themselves from lean-against-the-wind domestic monetary policy. These results support the existence of a risk-taking channel of currency appreciation at the bank level.

Debt overhang and moral hazard predict that poorly capitalized banks have a lower likelihood to issue equity, while the presence of regulatory and market pressures posits an opposite theoretical prediction. By using an international sample of bank seasoned equity offerings (SEOs), we show that the likelihood of issuing SEOs is higher in poorly capitalized banks and that such banks prefer SEOs to alternative capitalization strategies. A series of tests exploring the variation of capital regulation and market discipline show that market mechanisms rather than capital regulation are the primary driver of the decision to issue by poorly capitalized banks.