In 2001, government guarantees for savings banks in Germany were removed following a law suit. We use this natural experiment to examine the effect of government guarantees on bank risk taking, using a large data set of matched bank/borrower information. The results suggest that banks whose...

"We offer a new explanation of loan syndicate structure based on banks' comparative advantage in managing systematic liquidity risk. When a syndicated loan to a rated borrower has systematic liquidity risk, the fraction of passive participant lenders that are banks is about 8% higher than for...