We show that tax enforcement benefits US firms that borrow from banks. Using data on syndicated loans over the 1993-2017 period, we find that higher IRS audit probabilities exert a negative and significant effect on the cost of loans. The baseline estimates show that a one standard deviation...

We explore how bank CEOs' cultural heritage shapes the nexus between lending relationships and the cost of bank loans in the US syndicated loans market. We show that banks led by CEOs that trace their origin in more individualistic and masculine societies are less inclined to share with their...

We investigate how the cultural heritage of the CEOs of banks acting as lead lenders in the US syndicated loan market shapes the relationship between public corruption and the cost of bank loans. We find strong evidence that banks led by CEOs originating from higher uncertainty avoidance...

Using a conviction-based measure, we find that local (state-level) public corruption exerts a negative effect on the lending activity of US banks. Our baseline estimations show that the difference in public corruption between, e.g., Alabama, where corruption is high, and Minnesota, where...

An issue that has not been dealt in the literature refers to the relationship between bank loan efficiency and weather conditions. This paper provides empirical evidence, for the first time, that sheds new light into the dynamic interactions between weather and bank loan efficiency, using a...