We investigate whether cultural differences between professional decision-makers affect financial contracts in a large dataset of international syndicated bank loans. We find that more culturally distant lead banks offer borrowers smaller loans at a higher interest rate and are more likely to...

We show that supply-side financial shocks have a large impact on the investment decisions of firms. We do this by developing a new methodology to separate firms' credit shocks from loan supply shocks, using a vast sample of matched bank-firm lending data. We decompose loan movements in Japan for...