In spite of growing regulatory pressure in most developed economies, “zombie lending” remains a widespread practice by banks. In this paper we exploit a series of large-scale on-site inspections made on the credit portfolios of several Portuguese banks to investigate how these inspections...

A unique legal reform in 2004 in Sweden redistributed liquidation proceeds from banks holding floating liens to unsecured creditors. Using a country-wide panel of all registered firms, we document that the resulting reduction in collateral capacity contracts the amount and maturity of corporate...

We show that collateral plays an important role in the design of debt contracts, the provision of credit, and the incentives of lenders to monitor borrowers. Using a unique dataset from a large bank containing timely assessments of collateral values, in conjunction with a legal reform that...