While banks may change their credit supply due to bank balance-sheet shocks (the local lending channel), firms can react by adjusting their sources of financing in equilibrium (the aggregate lending channel). We provide a methodology to identify the aggregate (firm-level) effects of the lending...

Taking advantage of a rich database of more than 1 million companies in Spain, France and the U.K., we propose and test a hypothesis to explain why Spain has one of the world’s lowest business bankruptcy rates, even during the current economic crisis and after controlling for market exit...

The paper warns about the potential efficiency losses associated with low business bankruptcy rates (number of firms filing for bankruptcy as a proportion of the total stock of firms) and shows that welfare could be improved by increasing the protection of creditors in the bankruptcy system....

Small businesses, the majority of Spanish fi rms, rarely fi le for formal bankruptcy, and this has been the case even during the current economic crisis. This suggests that bankruptcy law has a limited role to play in the distress of small fi rms. We propose an explanation based on two premises:...

We propose an econometric analysis of the evolution of bank credit to the private sector in order to describe credit cycles and identify phases of particularly low (or negative) credit growth such as those that typically accompany financial or banking crises. We use a sample of twelve developed...

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we present an up-to-date assessment of the differences across euro area countries in the distributions of various measures of debt conditional on household characteristics. We consider three different outcomes: the probability of holding debt, the amount...

Do laws to protect borrowers curb foreclosures? This question is addressed by analysing the impact of foreclosure laws on default rates at state level in the US mortgage market. Using panel data techniques, we find a statistically significant effect of regulation on the different stages of the...

This article analyses the economics of financing banking supervision and attempts to respond to two questions: What are the most common financing practices? Can the differences in current financing practices be explained by country specific factors? We perform an empirical analysis that...

This paper analyses the risk and return of loans portfolios in a joint setting. I develop a model to obtain the distribution of loans returns. I use this model to describe the investment opportunity set of lenders using mean-variance analysis with a Value at Risk constraint. I also obtain closed...

This paper analyzes empirically what explains the low profitability of Chinese banks for the period 1997-2004. We find that better capitalized banks tend to be more profitable. The same is true for banks with a relatively larger share of deposits and for more X-efficient banks. In addition, a...