Liquidity dried up during the financial crisis of 2007-2009. Banks that relied more heavily on core deposit and equity capital financing – stable sources of financing – continued to lend relative to other banks. Banks that held more illiquid assets on their balance sheets, in contrast,...

We look at internal corporate governance mechanisms and the performance of publicly-traded U.S. banks before and during the financial crisis. Obviously, bank performance decreases dramatically during the crisis. This decrease occurs for all bank size groups. However, the largest banks see the...