We provide evidence that German savings banks – where local politicians are by law involved in their management – systematically adjust lending policies in response to local electoral cycles. The different timing of county elections across states and the existence of a control group of...

We provide causal evidence that German savings banks – where local politicians are by law involved in their management – systematically adjust lending policies in response to local electoral cycles. The different timing of county elections across states and the existence of a control group...

Government ownership of banks is very common in countries other than the United States. This paper provides cross-country, bank-level empirical evidence about political influences on these banks. It shows that government-owned banks increase their lending in election years relative to private...

This paper examines political determinants of government banks' lending decisions using the prefecture-level panel data on Japan's government loans from 1975 to 1992. It finds that the size of government loans is positively correlated with two political factors: (1) the electoral vulnerability...

We provide causal evidence that German savings banks where local politicians are by law involved in their management systematically adjust lending policies in response to local electoral cycles. The different timing of county elections across states and the existence of a control group of...

In this paper, we examine how the institutional design affects the outcome of bank bailout decisions. In the German savings bank sector, distress events can be resolved by local politicians or a state-level association. We show that decisions by local politicians with close links to the bank are...

We model and predict that politicians have incentives to delay bank failure in election years and that this incentive is exacerbated if the election is close. Our empirical application using the US data supports these predictions. At the bank level, we show that bank failure in an election year...

The aim of the paper is to examine the hypothesis of rent dissipation in the case of the Italian banking system during the suspension of gold convertibility. The major bank of the new born state of Italy – the Banca Nazionale nel regno d’Italia – experienced over the period 1866-1881 a...

This paper examines whether protectionist policies on the part of the government leads to increased corruption on part of the bureaucracy. A one-sector small open economy model is presented where corruption is shown to be increasing in tariffs and subsidies. Using multiple measures of corruption...