Exploiting legal reforms that facilitate the use of movable assets as collateral in secured debt transactions, we examine the impact of access to bank credit on corporate innovation. We create a firm-level panel data set on patenting activities for 45,325 firms across 30 European countries from...

Using exogenous variations in the market value of firms' real estate assets caused by fluctuations in local commercial real estate prices, I study how collateral shocks impact corporate innovation. I find evidence that collateral shocks change the quantity, quality, and trajectory of innovation....

Based on archival and survey data we show that the maturity of U.S. business loans has been continuously increasing since the mid-1930s when banks invented the term loan. Concurrently, bank innovation first involved the invention of credit analysis and covenant design. Later, bank innovation...