Blessing or curse? Government funding of deposit insurance and corporate lending

A key policy to limit the possibility of bank runs is an explicit deposit insurance scheme, which can be either privately or government funded. Using syndicated loans from 63 countries during the period 1985–2016, we study the effect of government involvement in deposit insurance funding on price and non-price characteristics of loans. We show that changes from purely private-funded to either government-funded or jointly funded deposit insurance increase all-in-spread-drawn by approximately 4.6%, further increase loan fees, decrease loan maturity, and increase the use of performance pricing provisions. Our findings are consistent with the moral hazard problem behind government-funded deposit insurance schemes

Industry Heterogeneity in the Risk-Taking Channel

We examine the transmission of the risk-taking channel to different industries using syndicated loans to U.S. borrowers from 1984 to 2018. We find that a one percentage point decrease in the shadow rate increases loan spreads by more than 30 basis points in the mining & construction and manufacturing sectors. The equivalent effect is lower in the services and trade industries, whereas the effect on the transportation & utilities and finance industries is less pronounced. Our results survive in several sensitivity tests and are immune to time-varying demand-side explanations. The identified differences in the potency of the risk-taking channel explain a significant part of the inferior performance of highly affected sectors compared to less-affected sectors in the year after a loan origination

Industry Heterogeneity in the Risk-Taking Channel

We examine the transmission of the risk-taking channel to different industries using syndicated loans to U.S. borrowers from 1984 to 2018. We find that a one percentage point decrease in the shadow rate increases loan spreads by more than 30 basis points in the mining & construction and manufacturing sectors. The equivalent effect is lower in the services and trade industries, whereas the effect on the transportation & utilities and finance industries is less pronounced. Our results survive in several sensitivity tests and are immune to time-varying demand-side explanations. The identified differences in the potency of the risk-taking channel explain a significant part of the inferior performance of highly affected sectors compared to less-affected sectors in the year after a loan origination

Environmentally Aware Households

The rising environmental awareness induces a changing landscape for policymakers and real economic prospects. We examine the properties of a general equilibrium model with endogenous household preferences (for labor, consumption, and environmental quality) and a negative environmental externality. The endogeneity of labor creates an additional channel of substitution between environmental quality and labor, besides the channel of substitution between environmental quality and consumption. We show that a key requirement for improved output following a positive shock in the weight of environmental quality (household environmental awareness) is that environmental awareness trades off the weight on labor and not the weight on consumption. An interesting feature of the model is that the existence of the environmental externality gives a non-zero capital tax in the long run

Environmentally Aware Households

The rising environmental awareness induces a changing landscape for policymakers and real economic prospects. We examine the properties of a general equilibrium model with endogenous household preferences (for labor, consumption, and environmental quality) and a negative environmental externality. The endogeneity of labor creates an additional channel of substitution between environmental quality and labor, besides the channel of substitution between environmental quality and consumption. We show that a key requirement for improved output following a positive shock in the weight of environmental quality (household environmental awareness) is that environmental awareness trades off the weight on labor and not the weight on consumption. An interesting feature of the model is that the existence of the environmental externality gives a non-zero capital tax in the long run

Blessing or curse? Government funding of deposit insurance and corporate lending

A key policy to limit the possibility of bank runs is an explicit deposit insurance scheme, which can be either privately or government funded. Using syndicated loans from 63 countries during the period 1985–2016, we study the effect of government involvement in deposit insurance funding on price and non-price characteristics of loans. We show that changes from purely private-funded to either government-funded or jointly funded deposit insurance increase all-in-spread-drawn by approximately 4.6%, further increase loan fees, decrease loan maturity, and increase the use of performance pricing provisions. Our findings are consistent with the moral hazard problem behind government-funded deposit insurance schemes

Being stranded with fossil fuel reserves? Climate policy risk and the pricing of bank loans

Do banks price the risk of stranded fossil fuel reserves? To address this question, we hand collect global data on corporate fossil fuel reserves from 2002 to 2016, match it with syndicated loans, and subsequently compare the loan rate charged to fossil fuel firms - along their climate policy exposure - to other firms. We find that banks price climate policy exposure, especially after 2015. We also uncover that our main effect further increases for loans with longer maturity, that loan size to fossil fuel firms increases, and that ‛Green’ banks also charge higher loan rates to fossil fuel firms

Corporate Taxes and Economic Inequality: A Credit Channel

Corporate taxation can have redistributive effects on income and wealth. We hypothesize and empirically establish such an effect working via bank credit. Using a unique sample of majority-owned firms that apply for credit, we show that after a decrease in corporate tax rates the relative-ly poor get easier access to credit. However, this policy also considerably increases loan amounts and decreases loan spreads for the relatively rich. Ultimately, reducing the corporate tax rate pre-dominantly increases the future income and wealth of relatively rich business owners

Bank market power and monetary policy transmission

This paper examines empirically the role of bank market power as an internal factor influencing banks’ reaction in terms of lending and risk-taking to monetary policy impulses. The analysis is carried out for the US and euro-area banking sectors over the period 1997-2010. Market power is estimated at the bank-year level, using a method that allows the efficient estimation of marginal cost of banks also at the bank-year level. The findings show that banks with even moderate levels of market power are able to buffer the negative impact of a monetary policy change on bank loans and credit risk. This effect is somewhat more pronounced in the euro area compared to the US. However, following the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007, the level of market power needed to shield bank loans and credit risk from the impact of a change in monetary policy increased substantially. This is clear evidence that the financial crisis reinforced the mechanisms of the bank lending and the risk-taking channels

Bank market power and monetary policy transmission

This paper examines empirically the role of bank market power as an internal factor influencing banks’ reaction in terms of lending and risk-taking to monetary policy impulses. The analysis is carried out for the US and euro-area banking sectors over the period 1997-2010. Market power is estimated at the bank-year level, using a method that allows the efficient estimation of marginal cost of banks also at the bank-year level. The findings show that banks with even moderate levels of market power are able to buffer the negative impact of a monetary policy change on bank loans and credit risk. This effect is somewhat more pronounced in the euro area compared to the US. However, following the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007, the level of market power needed to shield bank loans and credit risk from the impact of a change in monetary policy increased substantially. This is clear evidence that the financial crisis reinforced the mechanisms of the bank lending and the risk-taking channels