We use the 2020 Small Business Credit Survey to study the sources of racial disparities in use of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). Black-owned firms are 8.9 percentage points less likely than observably similar white-owned firms to receive PPP loans. About 55 percent of this take-up...

This paper examines the quality of credit ratings assigned to banks in Europe and the United States by the three largest rating agencies over the past two decades. We interpret credit ratings as relative assessments of creditworthiness, and define a new ordinal metric of rating error based on...

The COVID-19 pandemic could result in large government interventions in the banking industry. To shed light on the possible consequences on market power, we rely on the experience of the global financial crisis and exploit granular data on government interventions in more than 800 banks across...

What constitutes shadow banking has been described by the international financial institutions, such as FSB, IOSCO, ECB and European Commission. A common characteristic is that several of the shadow banking activities are outside the banking field but are likely to have an impact on the banking...

We empirically examine three channels in the relation between banks' CDS trading and loan sales. The substitute channel predicts a negative relation between CDS hedging and loan sales, and the complementary channel predicts a positive relation. The credit-enhancement channel predicts a positive...

The paper analyses how banks manage their capital position when they securitise, by focusing on the issuances sponsored by European banks before and after the financial crisis. Stylised facts suggest that, at the time of the crisis, European banks continued to issue structured products, but by...

Chinese banks have sought ways to rapidly expand lending in light of strict regulatory mandates to reduce official lending and maintain high capital adequacy ratios. Through arbitraging capital risk weights, total lending has expanded while capital adequacy ratios have remained unchanged....

Ottawa should consider new regulatory approaches to bolster the role of smaller financial institutions if it is to achieve its goals of enhancing quality, price and innovation in that sector, according to a new report from the C.D. Howe Institute. In “Swimming with Whales: How to Encourage...

Bank capital requirements are based on a mix of market values and book values. We investigate the effects of a policy change that ties regulatory capital to the market value of the "available-for-sale" investment securities portfolio for some banking organizations. Our analysis is based on...

We study how supervisory coverage affects syndicated lending. Relying on an unexpected change in supervisory coverage, we document that the costs of bank credit for borrowers excluded from supervision decrease by approximately 18% relative to an otherwise similar control group. We also find that...