We develop a new identification strategy to evaluate the impact of the geographic expansion of a bank holding company (BHC) across US metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) on BHC risk. For the average BHC, the instrumental variable results suggest that geographic expansion materially reduces risk. Geographic diversification does not affect loan quality. The results are consistent with arguments that geographic expansion lowers risk by reducing exposure to idiosyncratic local risks and inconsistent with arguments that expansion, on net, increases risk by reducing the ability of BHCs to monitor loans and manage risks.

This paper assesses the impact of the geographic diversification of bank holding company (BHC) assets across the United States on their market valuations. Using two new identification strategies based on the dynamic process of interstate bank deregulation, we find that exogenous increases in geographic diversity reduced BHC valuations. We also find that the geographic diversification of BHC assets increased insider lending and reduced loan quality. Taken together, these findings are consistent with theories predicting that geographic diversity intensifies agency problems.

We identify the unique role of the government bond lending market in collateral transformation during periods of market stress. Using a novel database, we provide evidence that safe assets in the lending market have higher demand, higher borrowing cost, and higher usage of noncash collateral relative to nonsafe assets during stressed market conditions. Moreover, we find that market participants are able to obtain safe assets using relatively low-quality noncash collateral, allowing for collateral transformation. We show that policy interventions by central banks can help reduce safe-asset shortages by returning sought-after safe assets to the market.

We provide estimates of profit shifting for over 2 million firm-year observations in 100 countries over the period 2009–2020. Employing nonparametric estimation techniques within a mainstay model of profit shifting, we examine how the profits of both parent and subsidiary firms within a multinational group respond to marginal changes in the composite tax indicator. The key advantage of this approach is that it yields firm-year estimates of profit shifting. Multinational firms engage in extensive profit shifting by maintaining affiliates in low-tax countries and zero-tax havens. Multinational groups with an ultimate tax-haven owner exhibit the largest profit response to tax incentives. Our new database opens important avenues for analyzing the sources and effects of profit shifting.

We show that lender of last resort (LOLR) policy exacerbates bank interconnectedness. Using novel micro-level data, we analyze LOLR’s haircut gaps: the differences between the private market and central bank haircuts. LOLR policy incentivizes banks to increase pledging and holdings of higher haircut-gap bonds, especially those issued by domestic and systemically important banks. Effects only apply to banks, not to nonbanks without LOLR access. LOLR funding revives bank bond issuance associated with higher haircut gaps and increases the subsequent correlation between pledging and issuing banks’ bond prices, in particular during periods of low-market returns and for domestic, systemically important banks.

We examine gender differences in career progression and promotions using personnel data from the European Central Bank (ECB) during the period 2003–2017. A gender wage gap emerges within a few years of hiring, despite broadly similar entry conditions. We also find a gender promotion gap before 2010 when the ECB issued a public commitment to diversity. Following this change, the promotion gap disappears. Using data on promotion applications, we find a gender application bias, partly driven by preferences for competition. Following promotion, women perform better in terms of salary progression.

This paper is the first to show that financial institutions may be effectively undercapitalized as a result of incomplete consolidation of minority ownership. Using two approaches – consolidating the minority-owned affiliates with the parent or deducting equity investments in minority ownership from the parent's capital – we find that the effective capitalization ratios of small US bank holding companies (BHCs) are substantially lower than the reported ratios. Empirical evidence suggests that the effectively lower capitalization ratios are associated with higher riskiness at the BHC level. Capital adjustments following pro forma consolidation better capture the additional risks than capital adjustments in the form of equity deductions for investments in minority-owned affiliates. These findings have important implications for the regulation of bank capital.

We study the mechanisms driving bank losses across historical banking crises in 46 economies and the effectiveness of policy interventions in restoring bank capitalization. We find that bank stocks experience large, permanent declines at the onset of crises. These losses predict commensurate long-term declines in banks’ earnings and dividends, rather than elevated future equity returns. Bank losses are primarily driven by write-downs of nonperforming assets, not asset sales during panics. Forceful liquidity-based interventions during crises predict only small, temporary increases in bank market value. Overall, these results suggest that bank losses during crises are not primarily due to temporary price dislocations. Early liquidity interventions can avert banking crises, but only under specific conditions. Once large bank equity declines have occurred, policy responses have historically failed to prevent persistent undercapitalization in the banking sector.