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Journal of Financial Economics Vol. 108 No. 3 2013

“When the cat's away the mice will play”: Does regulation at home affect bank risk-taking abroad?

Steven Ongena1,2; Alexander A. Popov3; Gregory F. Udell4

1 Centre for Economic Policy Research · 2 Tilburg University · 3 European Central Bank · 4 Indiana University

Abstract

This paper provides the first empirical evidence that bank regulation is associated with cross-border spillover effects through the lending activities of large multinational banks. We analyze business lending by 155 banks to 9,613 firms in 1,976 different localities across 16 countries. We find that lower barriers to entry, tighter restrictions on bank activities, and to a lesser degree higher minimum capital requirements in domestic markets are associated with lower bank lending standards abroad. The effects are stronger when banks are less efficiently supervised at home, and are observed to exist independently from the impact of host-country regulation.

DOI
10.1016/j.jfineco.2013.01.006
Volume
108
Issue
3
Pages
727-750
Language
en
Sources
crossref bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex

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