Abstract We analyze the impact of a requirement similar to the Basel III Liquidity Coverage Ratio on the bank intermediation applying Regression Discontinuity Designs. Using a unique dataset on Dutch banks, we show that a liquidity requirement causes long-term borrowing and lending rates as well as demand for long-term interbank loans to increase. Lower levels of aggregate liquidity increase the estimated effects. Short-term borrowing and lending rates only rise during periods of lower market-wide liquidity. Further, banks do not seem able to pass on the increased funding costs in the interbank market to their private sector clients. Rather, a liquidity requirement seems to decrease banks’ interest margins.

This study investigates how Schwartz’s cultural dimensions of embeddedness and mastery affect the corporate cost of debt through bankruptcy risk and sensitivity to agency activity channels. Using data from 33 countries, we find a strong and robust negative relation between embeddedness and the cost of debt. The estimated relation between mastery and the corporate cost of debt is negative and significant in most of the tests. Further analyses reveal that the development of financial intermediation and the enforcement of insider trading law moderate the relation between culture and the cost of debt. Confirming our hypotheses, we document that embeddedness is negatively related to bankruptcy risk and sensitivity to agency activity. We find that mastery is positively related to bankruptcy risk across countries as well, but this relation is weaker. We also show that mastery is positively related to sensitivity to agency activity among countries with highly leveraged firms.