In this paper, we explore the determinants of newswire coverage of Federal Reserve (Fed) communications. Our sample covers all 344 forward‐looking communications made in the period May 1999–May 2004. We find, first, that there is a higher likelihood of newswire coverage for monetary policy...

Social banks are financial intermediaries paying attention to non-economic (i.e. social, ethical, and environmental) criteria. This paper investigates the behavior of social banks in the European credit market. We use a unique hand-collected dataset on 389 business loans granted by a French...

Cash holdings have often been presumed to help resolve the inherent uncertainty of assessing banks. Nonetheless, extant empirical evidence is inconclusive. The present paper adopts a novel approach to assessing the level of stockholder uncertainty associated with the cash holdings reported by...

In most developed countries, regulators have imposed loan ceilings to subsidized microfinance institutions (MFIs). Micro-entrepreneurs in need of above-ceiling loans are left with the co-financing option, which means securing the aboveceiling share of the loan with a regular bank, and getting a...

This paper compares the loans granted to male and female entrepreneurs by a French microfinance institution (MFI). The sample period is split in two: before and after the MFI implemented France's regulatory EUR 10,000 loan ceiling. In the first period, the MFI does not co-finance projects with...

The evidence on gender discrimination in lending remains controversial. To capture gender biases in banks’ loan allocations, we observe the impact on the applicants of a microfinance institution (MFI) and exploit the natural experiment of a regulatory change imposing a strict EUR 10,000 loan...

This paper shines light on subsidy-dependent microfinance institutions (MFIs). Firstly, our model shows that subsidy uncertainty can have pervasive effects on MFIs’ poverty-reduction mission. In particular, we argue that supply-driven uncertainty can lead to mission drift. MFIs maximize...

This paper starts from the observation that 23% of the world’s microfinance institutions (MFIs) manage without subsidies. We examine how unsubsidized institutions cope with their social mission. Overall, the lack of subsidies worsens social performances. However, our results show that...

Banks cut dividends with great reluctance, as if addicted to them. Their apparent addiction is a major cause of concern for regulators because it could endanger the whole banking system. However, banks may be rational in maintaining elevated dividends if agency costs are high and dividends...

This paper is the first to analyze the credit risk of a microfinance institution based on the loan portfolio of a leading Maghrebian microfinance institution, both in terms of number of clients served and of portfolio size. This allows us to work with a proprietary data set of 1,144,770...