In this paper a new instrument for monetary policy shocks is presented. Exogenous variation of the policy rate may come from frictions of collective decision-making. Dissenting votes indicate how far the final decision of the decision making body is from the mean of the members' individually...

We exploit a nation-wide introduction of mandatory disclosure of borrowers' total credit exposures and show that sharing such information increases credit access independent of borrowers' history. Differentiating between borrowers applying to competitor banks and those reapplying to their...