Significant disagreement exists as to whether the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) influences the lending behavior of financial institutions. We conduct empirical tests on the lending of banks directly affected by regulatory enforcement of the CRA those experiencing upgrades or downgrades in...

We hypothesize that features of European capital markets used to distinguish market reliance and investor protection have predictably influenced emerging national differences in bank capitalization, growth, and choice of income-producing activities. We characterize countries' capital regimes as...