This paper offers a possible explanation for the conflicting empirical results in the literature concerning the relation between loan risk and collateral. Specifically, we posit that different economic characteristics or types of collateral pledges may be associated with the empirical dominance...

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...

We study the risk-taking channel of monetary policy in Bolivia, a dollarized country where monetary changes are transmitted exogenously from the US. We find that a lower policy rate spurs the granting of riskier loans, to borrowers with worse credit histories, lower ex-ante internal ratings, and...

We document that central banks are significantly more likely to report slightly positive profits than slightly negative profits, especially amid greater political pressure, the public’s receptiveness to more extreme political views, and when governors are reappointable. The propensity to...

We document that central banks are significantly more likely to report slightly positive profits than slightly negative profits. The discontinuity in the profit distribution is (i) more pronounced amid greater political or public pressure, the public’s receptiveness to more extreme political...

A string of theoretical papers shows that the non-exclusivity of credit contracts generates important negative contractual externalities. Employing a unique dataset, we identify how these externalities affect the supply of credit. Using internal information on a creditor's willingness to lend,...

We show that laws and institutions that grant creditors stronger enforcement rights and bargaining power upon default increase expected recovery rates on collateral. Using unique data that provides ex-ante appraised liquidation values on secured loans for a single global bank, we estimate...