This paper investigates how banks and finance companies operate in business groups. Using uniquely detailed ownership data from Thailand, we find that the controlling share- holders extensively use pyramids to control banks and finance companies and assign different lending strategies across...

Despite the downward trend of land prices and the ex-post low return on real estate loans, Japanese banks increased their lending to the real estate sector during the 1990s. We argue that this phenomenon can be explained by the risk-shifting incentives of banks and discover that banks with low...