Evidence suggests that banks tend to lend a lot during booms, and very little during recessions. We propose a simple explanation for this phenomenon. We show that, instead of dampening productivity shocks, the banking sector tends to exacerbate them, leading to excessive fluctuations of credit,...

This paper investigates banks' corporate social responsibility. The credit market is composed of two sectors: one for standard and one for ethical projects. Since ethical banks are committed to investing in ethical projects, standard and ethical banks compete in the market for ethical projects....

Both borrowers and lenders can be socially responsible (SR). Ethical banks commit to financing only ethical projects, which have social profitability but lower expected revenues than standard projects. Instead, no credible commitment exists for SR borrowers. The matching between SR borrowers and...

Green innovation is a key element in fighting climate change. But there are several challenges that need to be addressed in managing a green technology transition, both in terms of interacting market failures (environmental externality, public good nature of innovation, strategic behaviour of...

In a model of dual agency problems where borrower-lenders and bank-nonbank incentives may conflict, we predict a hockey stick relation between bank skin in the game and covenant tightness. As bank participation declines covenant tightness increases until reaching a low threshold, at which point...

Because of limited liability, insolvent banks have an incentive to continue lending to insolvent borrowers, in order to hide losses and gamble for resurrection, even though this is socially inefficient. We suggest a scheme that regulators could use to solve this problem. The scheme would induce...

This paper considers lending to finance projects in a setting where repayment enforcement appears impossible. The loan was illegal and thus legally unenforceable. Creditors were incapable of applying private coercion to force repayment. Borrowers lacked both collateral and reputation capital....

Empirical evidence suggests that widespread financial distress, by disrupting enforcement of credit contracts, can be self-propagatory and adversely affect the supply of credit. We propose a unifying theory that models the interplay between enforcement, borrower default decisions, and the...

We characterize Contractual Saving for Housing (CSH), a widespread and important product of household housing finance in Continental Europe, as relationship lending that is based on information production about borrowers in preceding saving relationships. In a multi-period partial equilibrium...

Corporate term loans typically include a penalty-free prepayment option. In a model where borrowers strategically prepay, we show that high prepayment risk can trigger credit rationing by the bank. However, an upfront fee, which allows the bank to lower the loan spread and therefore the...