We study whether political parties exert precise control over the outcomes of legislative elections. We test for discontinuities in two outcomes that, in the absence of precise control, should be smooth at the threshold that determines control of the legislature: the identity of the party that...

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...

In recent years, voter ID laws and convenience voting have generated heated partisan debates. To shed light on these policy issues, we survey the recent evidence on the institutional determinants and effects of voter turnout and broaden the perspective beyond the most debated rules. We begin by...

This paper analyzes the relationship between bank lobbying and supervisory decisions of regulators, and documents its moral hazard implications. Exploiting bank-level information on the universe of commercial and savings banks in the United States, I find that regulators are 44.7 percent less...

The possibility of creating a state bank has received much recent attention in the United States. In 2021, six states introduced legislation to create a state bank; in 2019, similar legislation was enacted in California for municipal banks. This paper develops a framework to evaluate state...

This paper argues that creditors reflect the financial-safety-net aspect of bank lobbying, plausibly considering the connection between bank lobbying and government bailouts. Using a structural approach, I show that bank lobbying is negatively associated with the occurrence of a run-like...

The World Financial Crisis has shaken the fundamentals of international banking and triggered a downward spiral of asset prices. To prevent a further meltdown of markets, governments have intervened massively through rescues measures aimed at recapitalizing banks and through liquidity support....