This paper investigates the frequency of connections between banks and non-financial firms through board linkages and whether those connections affect lending and borrowing behavior. Although a board linkages may reduce the costs of information flows between the lender and borrower, a board...

We investigate how bank migration across state lines over the last quarter century has affected the size and covariance of business fluctuations across states. Starting with a two-state version of the unit banking model in Holmstrom and Tirole (1997), we conclude that the theoretical effect of...

This paper summarizes the effects of deregulation of restrictions on bank entry and expansion on the real economy. The evidence suggests that following state-level deregulation of restrictions on branching, state economic growth accelerated. This better growth performance was especially...

We test how active management of bank credit risk exposure through the loan sales market affects capital structure, lending, profits, and risk. We find that banks that rebalance their C&I loan portfolio exposures by both buying and selling loans – that is, banks that use the loan sales market...

This paper argues that banks have a unique ability to hedge against systematic liquidity shocks. Deposit inflows provide a natural hedge for loan demand shocks that follow declines in market liquidity. Consequently, one dimension of bank “specialness” is that banks can insure firms against...