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 US over the past quarter century. We have two main results. First, capital helps small...

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...

We investigate benefits to business borrowers from bank bailouts – specifically the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Applying difference-in-difference methodology to loan-level data, we find more favorable contract terms in five dimensions – spread, amount, maturity, collateral, and...

We model dynamic bank capital structure under three optimally-designed regulatory regimes dealing with potential default { bailout, where government provides capital; bail-in, using private-sector funds; and no regulatory intervention, allowing failure. Only under optimally designed bail-in do...

How well does monetary policy affect bank behavior, particularly during financial crises? What is the role of banks in creating asset bubbles that burst and lead to crises? We address these issues by focusing on bank liquidity creation, a comprehensive measure of bank output that accounts for...

We investigate how relationship borrowers fare relative to others in loan contract terms (spread, collateral, maturity, amount) during times of need using the COVID-19 quasi-natural experiment. COVID-19 is superior for such analysis because it primarily affects borrowers rather than banks. Our...

Governments provide guarantees to banks, such as deposit insurance, often increasing them during financial crises. While risk effects are well researched, impacts on bank output remain largely unexplored. We investigate bank output effects using data from 75 countries on bank liquidity creation,...

Despite the devastating worldwide human and economic tolls of the COVID-19 crisis, it has created some positive economic and financial surprises and opportunities for research. This paper highlights two such favorable surprises – the shortest U.S. recession on record and the avoidance of any...

Economic agents pursue government funds using political connections, but it is sometimes unclear which types of connections and whose connections matter, and which agents have opportunities to benefit. We address these issues for the over one-half-trillion-dollar Paycheck Protection Program...

Many aspects of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) are well-studied, but we focus on an important exception: bank efficiency. Bank efficiency is also well-studied for other topics in banking, but not PPP. Using instrumental variables for identification, we find more intense PPP lending...