This paper investigates whether European banks have capital targets and how deviations from the target impact their equity composition and activity mix. Using quarterly data for a sample of large European banks between 2004 and 2011, we show that there are notable asymmetries in banks' reactions...

Current empirical methods to identify and assess the impact of bank credit supply shocks rely strictly on multi-bank firms and ignore firms borrowing from only one bank. Yet, these single-bank firms are often the majority of firms in an economy and most prone to credit supply shocks. We propose...

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