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...

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,...

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 bank relationships in a rarely-considered context – consumer and small business credit cards. Using over one million accounts, we find during normal times, consumer relationship customers enjoy relatively favorable credit terms, consistent with the bright side of relationships,...

We investigate bank relationships in a rarely considered context – consumer and small business credit cards. Using over one million accounts, we find during normal times, consumer relationship customers enjoy relatively favorable credit terms, consistent with the bright side of relationships,...

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...

Financial crises result in price and quantity rationing of creditworthy borrowers. However, little is known about the relative severity of these two rationing types, which borrowers are rationed most, and differences between foreign and domestic banks. Our data on lenders, borrowers,...

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...

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...