Bank capital ratios have increased steadily since the financial crisis. For a sample of 94 large banks from advanced … reductions in risk weights playing a lesser role. On average, banks continued to expand their lending, though lending growth was … relatively slower among European banks. Lower dividend payouts and (for advanced economy banks) wider lending spreads have …

We study empirically the effect of focus (specialization) vs. diversification on the return and the risk of banks using …) focus and diversification using a unique data set that is able to identify individual bank loan exposures to different … bank return while endogenously producing riskier loans for all banks in our sample (this effect being most powerful for …