This paper reviews the extant empirical studies of financial innovation. Adopting broad criteria, the authors found just two dozen studies, over half of which (fourteen) had been conducted since 2000. Since some financial innovations are examined by more than one study, only fourteen distinct phenomena have been covered. Especially striking is the fact that only two studies are directed at the hypotheses advanced in many broad descriptive articles concerning the environmental conditions (e.g., regulation, taxes, unstable macroeconomic conditions, and ripe technologies) spurring financial innovation. The authors offer some tentative conjectures as to why empirical studies of financial innovation are comparatively rare. Among their suggested culprits is an absence of accessible data. The authors urge financial regulators to undertake more surveys of financial innovation and to make the survey data more available to researchers.

This paper offers a possible explanation for the conflicting results in the literature concerning the empirical relation between collateral and loan risk. We posit that differences in collateral characteristics, such as liquidity, may be associated with the empirical dominance of different risk-collateral relations implied by economic theory. Using credit registry data and a novel identification strategy to control for borrower and lender selection effects allows us to differentiate between the ex ante and ex post theories of collateral. We find that collateral overall is associated with lower risk premiums and higher default rates. The results indicate an important role for collateral in mitigating losses and reducing risk-taking incentives, consistent with ex post theories. Liquid collateral is associated with especially low risk premiums, and these loans perform better than those with illiquid collateral or no collateral. We also find that individual collateral types exhibit significant variation in terms of risk-collateral relations, with some consistent with ex ante theories and others with ex post theories. Our results suggest that the conflicting results in the literature may occur because different samples may be dominated by different types of collateral with different economic characteristics.

An important theoretical literature motivates collateral as a mechanism that mitigates adverse selection, credit rationing, and other inefficiencies that arise when borrowers have ex ante private information. There is no clear empirical evidence regarding the central implication of this literature – that a reduction in asymmetric information reduces the incidence of collateral. We exploit exogenous variation in lender information related to the adoption of an information technology that reduces ex ante private information, and compare collateral outcomes before and after adoption. Our results are consistent with this central implication of the private-information models and support the economic importance of this theory.

Using supervisory data from large U.S. bank holding companies (BHCs), we document that operational loss recovery rates decrease in macroeconomic downturns. This procyclical relationship varies by business lines and loss event types and is robust to alternative data aggregations, macroeconomic measurement horizons, subperiod partitions and estimation methodologies. Further analysis shows that resource constraints faced by BHC risk management functions is a plausible explanation for these patterns. Our findings offer new evidence on how economic shocks transmit to banking industry losses with implications for risk management and supervision.

ABSTRACT We test the implications of Flannery's (1986) and Diamond's (1991) models concerning the effects of risk and asymmetric information in determining debt maturity, and we examine the overall importance of informational asymmetries in debt maturity choices. We employ data on over 6,000 commercial loans from 53 large U.S. banks. Our results for low‐risk firms are consistent with the predictions of both theoretical models, but our findings for high‐risk firms conflict with the predictions of Diamond's model and with much of the empirical literature. Our findings also suggest a strong quantitative role for asymmetric information in explaining debt maturity.

ABSTRACT We study links between the labor market for loan officers and access to mortgage credit. Using novel data matching mortgage applications to loan officers, we find that minorities are underrepresented among loan officers. Minority borrowers are less likely to complete mortgage applications, have completed applications approved, and to ultimately take up a loan. These disparities are reduced when minority borrowers work with minority loan officers. These pairings also lead to lower default rates, suggesting minority loan officers have an informational advantage with minority borrowers. Our results suggest minority underrepresentation among loan officers reduces minority borrowers’ access to credit.