In spite of growing regulatory pressure in most developed economies, “zombie lending” remains a widespread practice by banks. In this paper we exploit a series of large-scale on-site inspections made on the credit portfolios of several Portuguese banks to investigate how these inspections...

Firms with credit-default swaps (CDS) traded on their debt may face "empty creditors'' as hedged creditors have less incentive to participate in firm restructuring. We test for the existence of empty creditors by employing an exogenous change to the bankruptcy code in Germany, that effectively...

This paper studies the effects of the bank capital requirements imposed by the European authorities in October 2011 on loan collateral and personal guarantees usage to enhance capital ratios. We use detailed information on the loan contracts granted by a representative Spanish bank and several...

We analyze the impact of quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank and Bank of England on cross‐border credit flows. Relying on comprehensive loan‐level data, we find that Fed QE strongly boosts cross‐border credit granted to Turkish banks by banks located in the...

How do banks offer mortgages through on online platform to areas without their branch presence? Unique data on responses from different banks to applicant households yield three salient findings: First, banks offer 4% more often and 6 basis points cheaper credit when markets have high versus low...

Comparing banks to non-bank lenders, we investigate whether the geographical distance between lenders, borrowers and their properties is reflected in the pricing of US mortgages that were included in US CMBS pools during the 2000 to 2017 period. The difference in loan spread when bank-borrower...

We study the impact of emotions on real-world decisions made by loan officers by analyzing the loan conditions of loans granted immediately after a bank branch robbery. We find significant differences between the conditions of loans granted after a robbery and changes in loan conditions that...

Most regulators grant contingent convertible bonds (CoCos) the status of equity. Theory, however, suggests that CoCos can induce debt overhang, thereby, increasing the cost of issuing equity. First, we theoretically investigate how the extent of this debt overhang varies with bank...

This paper provides evidence on the strategic lending decisions made by banks facing a negative funding shock. Using bank- rm level credit data, we show that banks reallocate credit within their domestic loan portfolio in at least three different ways. First, banks reallocate to sectors where...

We study a unique experiment to examine the importance of rating agencies' private information for bank shareholders. On July 20, 2011, Fitch Ratings refined their bank standalone ratings, which measure intrinsic financial strength, from a 9-point to a 21-point scale. This refinement did not...