We find the financial condition of states impacts bank credit supply through their municipal bond holdings. In particular, we treat sudden political and statutory actions during the 2011 union bargaining rights debates in Wisconsin and Ohio as exogenous shocks to state solvency. We show bank valuations and municipal bond spreads adjust to the announcements, and, over longer horizons, a new lending channel linked to state solvency emerges, whereby banks supply credit as municipal bond appreciations free up capital.

The critical role played by financial institutions in the recent financial crises has generated renewed interest on the corporate finance of the banking firm and the impact of the banking sector on the real economy. This paper introduces the special issue of the Review of Financial Studies dedicated to “The Value of Bank Capital and the Structure of the Banking Industry.” The special issue combines papers presented at the conference on “Corporate Finance of Financial Intermediaries” in September 2006, which was jointly organized by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Wharton Financial Institutions Center of the University of Pennsylvania, and the Review of Financial Studies, with other related papers.

This article studies the connection between risk taking and executive compensation in financial institutions. A model of shareholders, debtholders, depositors, and an executive demonstrates that (i) excess risk taking can be addressed by basing compensation on both stock price and the credit default swaps (CDS) spread, (ii) shareholders may not be able to commit to design such contracts, and (iii) they may not want to due to distortions from deposit insurance or unobservable tail risk. The advantage of using the CDS spread rather than deferred compensation or debt is due to the fact that it is a market price and reduces agency costs.