We study the sensitivity of banks’ credit supply to small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) in the UK to banks’ financial condition before and during the financial crisis. Employing unique data on the geographical location of all bank branches in the UK, we connect firms’ access to bank...

Initially, voting rights were limited to wealthy elites providing political support for stock markets. The franchise expansion induces the median voter to provide political support for banking development as this new electorate has lower financial holdings and benefits less from the uncertainty...

We study the role of regional banking system characteristics for regional banking system fragility in Asia, Europe, Latin America and the US. We find that regional banking system fragility reduces when banks in the region jointly hold more liquid assets, are better capitalized, and when regional...