We use bank-, loan- and firm-level data together with a quasi-natural experiment to estimate the impact of capital requirement reductions on bank lending and real economic outcomes. We find that capital requirement reductions increase lending both to households and firms at the bank- and...

This paper empirically examines how capital affects a bank's performance (survival and market share), and how this effect varies across banking crises, market crises, and normal times that occurred in the U.S. over the past quarter century. We have two main results. First, capital helps small...

Collateral is a widely used, but not well understood, debt-contracting feature. Two broad strands of theoretical literature explain collateral as arising from the existence of either ex ante private information or ex post incentive problems between borrowers and lenders. However, the extant...

An important theoretical literature motivates collateral as a mechanism that mitigates adverse selection, credit rationing, and other inefficiencies that arise when borrowers hold ex ante private information. There is no clear empirical evidence regarding the central implication of this...

U.S. commercial banks are increasingly using credit scoring models to underwrite small business credits. This paper discusses this technology, evaluates the research findings on the effects of this technology on small business credit availability, and links these findings to a number of research...

The U.S. bank stress tests aim to improve financial system stability. However, they may also affect bank credit supply. We formulate and test opposing hypotheses about these effects. Our findings are consistent with the Risk Management Hypothesis, under which stress-tested banks reduce credit...

While operational risk is generally perceived as idiosyncratic with limited systemic implications, we document that operational risk significantly threatens financial stability. Using supervisory data on large U.S. bank holding companies (BHCs) over 2002:Q1-2016:Q4, we find operational losses...

Using supervisory data from large U.S. bank holding companies (BHCs), we document that BHCs suffer more operational losses during episodes of extreme storms. Among different operational loss types, losses due to external fraud, BHCs' failure to meet obligations to clients and faulty business...