We examine how banks manage carbon transition risk by selling loans given to polluting borrowers to less regulated shadow banks in securitization markets. Exploiting the election of Donald Trump as an exogenous shock that reduces carbon risk, we find that banks’ securitization decisions are sensitive to borrowers’ carbon footprints. Banks are more likely to securitize brown loans when carbon risk is high but swiftly change to keep these loans on their balance sheets when carbon risk is reduced after Trump’s election. Importantly, securitization enables banks to offer lower interest rates to polluting borrowers but does not affect the supply of green loans. Our findings are more pronounced among domestic banks and banks that do not display green lending preferences. We discuss how securitization can weaken the effectiveness of bank climate policies through reducing banks’ incentives to price carbon risk.

The establishment of the European Banking Union constitutes a major change in the regulatory framework of the banking system. Main parts are implemented via directives that show staggered transposition timing across EU member states. Based on the newly compiled Banking Union Directives Database, we assess how banks’ funding costs responded to the Capital Requirements Directive IV (CRD IV). Our findings show an upward trend in funding costs which is driven by an increase in cost of equity and partially offset by a decline in cost of debt. The diverging trends are most present in countries with an ex-ante lower regulatory capital stringency, which is in line with banks’ short-run adjustment needs but longer-run benefits from increased financial stability.

We study how deposit competition affects a bank's decision to securitize mortgages. Exploiting the state-specific removal of deposit market caps across the U.S. as a source of competition, we find a 7.1 percentage point increase in the probability that banks securitize mortgage loans. This result is driven by an 11 basis point increase in deposit costs and corresponding reductions in banks' deposit holdings. Our results are strongest among banks that rely more on deposit funding. These findings highlight a hitherto undocumented and unintended regulatory cause that motivates banks to adopt the originate-to-distribute model.

Institutional common ownership of firm pairs in the same industry increases the likelihood of a preexisting social connection among their CEOs. We establish this relationship using a quasi-natural experiment that exploits institutional mergers combined with firms’ hiring events and detailed information on CEO biographies. In addition, for peer firms, gaining a CEO connection from a hiring firm’s CEO appointment correlates with higher returns on assets, stock market returns, and decreasing product similarity between companies. We find evidence consistent with common owners allocating CEO connections to shape managerial decisionmaking and increase portfolio firms’ performance.

We investigate how a state's political corruption affects a resident firm's debt contracting and how a change in anti-corruption regulation alters the relation between corruption and loan contracting. Firms in more corrupt states are associated with significantly higher loan spreads and tighter loan covenants than firms in less corrupt states. Furthermore, the passage of the Dodd–Frank whistleblowing provision amplifies the conhcerns of banks about the detrimental impact of corruption due to the increased exposure of firms to whistleblowing threats. The detrimental impact of corruption is further amplified when a state has a higher level of whistleblowing involvement, when firms are located in more corrupt states or closer to the SEC office, and when the bank's state is less corrupt than the firm's state. In general, we document the externality of corruption in the debt financing of firms and the response of banks to changes in regulation.

This paper examines how firms’ exposure to supply chain disruptions (SCD) affects firm outcomes in the European Union (EU). Exploiting heterogeneous responses to workplace closures imposed by sourcing countries during the pandemic as a shock to SCD, we provide empirical evidence that firms in industries relying more heavily on foreign inputs experience a significant decline in sales compared to other firms. We document that external finance, particularly bank financing, plays a critical role in mitigating the effects of SCD. Furthermore, we highlight the unique importance of bank loans for small and solvent firms. Our findings also indicate that highly diversified firms and those sourcing inputs from less distant partners are less vulnerable to SCD.

This paper analyzes the impact of reduced tax incentives for equity financing on banks' regulatory capital ratios under the Basel III regime. We are particularly interested in a recent interest rate cut in the Italian corporate equity allowance, which reduces the relative tax advantage of equity financing. The results show that banks respond to this increased tax disparity by significantly reducing their regulatory capital while at the same time reducing their risk-taking. The decline in capital is more pronounced for small banks and outweighs the initial capital gains from the introduction of this tax instrument. Our results challenge the use of equity allowances, in that financial stability gains persist only as long as costly tax subsidies remain intact and diminish as the size of the subsidy is reduced.

Banks have been operating in a low interest rate environment paired with booming housing markets. For the largest banks in the euro area and the period 2015-2022, we assess whether banks reallocate their foreign loan portfolio backed by real estate as a response to differences in local lending spreads across the home and destination country and conditional on reduced information frictions due to borrowing-country exposures. The main result is that the relative share of foreign real estate backed lending increases in case of return opportunities, and this sensitivity depends on local exposures towards the borrowing country. The result is driven by subsamples for which neither the home nor the borrowing country have implemented macroprudential regulation targeting real estate lending, or for which there is a misalignment in macroprudential policies. Nevertheless, we find limited evidence that the riskiness of real estate backed loans goes up during our sample period, and we discuss potential reasons for this result including the possibility of hidden losses.

This paper examines the relation between corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance and tax–motivated income shifting. Using a profit–shifting measure estimated from multinational enterprises (MNEs) data, we find that parent firms with higher CSR scores shift significantly more profits to their low-tax foreign subsidiaries. Overall, our evidence suggests that MNEs engaging in CSR activities acquire legitimacy and moral capital that temper negative responses by stakeholders and thus have greater scope and chance to engage in unethical profit-shifting activities, consistent with the legitimacy theory.

Seit 1990 wurden im Rahmen der „Gemeinschaftsaufgabe Verbesserung der regionalen Wirtschaftsstruktur“ (GRW) rund 68 Milliarden Euro an Unternehmen in strukturschwachen Regionen in Ost- und Westdeutschland vergeben. Dieser Beitrag verdeutlicht die Rolle der Banken dabei und zeigt erhebliche räumliche Unterschiede bei den Subventionen.