Search Results
Working Paper
The Impact of Post Stress Tests Capital on Bank Lending
We investigate one channel through which the annual bank stress tests, as part of the Federal Reserve?s Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR) review, could unexpectedly affect the provision of bank credit. To quantify the impact of the stress tests on lending, we compare the capital implied by the supervisory stress tests with the level of capital implied by the banks? own models, a measure we call the capital gap. We then study the impact of the capital gap on the loan growth of BHCs subject to supervisory or bank-run stress tests. Consistent with previous results in the bank ...
Working Paper
The cross-market spillover of economic shocks through multi-market banks
This paper investigates the mortgage lending of banks operating in multiple U.S. metropolitan areas during the housing market collapse of 2007-2009. Some metro areas in the U.S. suffered much greater mortgage defaults than others. We use this regional variation to identify whether high mortgage delinquencies in some markets affected multi-market banks' mortgage lending in other markets. Our results show that multi-market banks reduced local mortgage lending in response to delinquencies in other markets, consistent with the view that local economic shocks can be transmitted to other regions ...
Working Paper
Un-used Bank Capital Buffers and Credit Supply Shocks at SMEs during the Pandemic
Did banks curb lending to creditworthy small and mid-sized enterprises (SME) during the COVID-19 pandemic? Sitting on top of minimum capital requirements, regulatory capital buffers introduced after the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC) are costly regions of "rainy day" equity capital designed to absorb losses and provide lending capacity in a downturn. Using a novel set of confidential loan level data that includes private SME firms, we show that "buffer-constrained" banks (those entering the pandemic with capital ratios close to this regulatory buffer region) reduced loan commitments to ...
Working Paper
Bank liquidity hoarding and the financial crisis: an empirical evaluation
I test and find supporting evidence for the precautionary motive hypothesis of liquidity hoarding for U.S. commercial banks during the recent financial crisis. I find that banks held more liquid assets in anticipation of future losses from securities write-downs. Exposure to securities losses in their investment portfolios and expected loan losses (measured by loan loss reserves) represent key measures of banks' on-balance sheet risks, in addition to off-balance sheet liquidity risk stemming from unused loan commitments. Furthermore, unrealized securities losses and loan loss reserves seem to ...
Discussion Paper
Bank Lending to Private Credit: Size, Characteristics, and Financial Stability Implications
Private credit (or private debt) has emerged as one of the fastest-growing segments of nonbank financial intermediaries (NBFIs) over the past 15 years or so. Although there is no universal definition, private credit generally refers to direct loans made to mid-market businesses typically by non-bank vehicles such as private debt (PD) funds and Business Development Companies (BDCs) (Cai and Haque, 2024; Haque, Mayer, and Stefanescu, 2025). The asset class totaled $1.34 trillion in the U.S. (Exhibit 1) and nearly $2 trillion globally by 2024-Q2, and has grown roughly five times since 2009.
Working Paper
The Real Effects of Credit Line Drawdowns
Do firms use credit line drawdowns to finance investment? Using a unique dataset of 467 COMPUSTAT firms with credit lines, we study the purpose of drawdowns during the 2007-2009 financial crisis. Our data show that credit line drawdowns had already increased in 2007, precisely when disruptions in bank funding markets began to squeeze aggregate liquidity. Consistent with theory, our results confirm that firms use drawdowns to sustain investment after an idiosyncratic liquidity shock. Using an instrumental variable approach based on institutional features of credit line contracts, we find that ...
Working Paper
Exchange rates, optimal debt composition, and hedging in small open economies
This paper develops a model of the firm's choice between debt denominated in local currency and that denominated in foreign currency in a small open economy characterized by exchange rate risk and hedging possibilities. The model shows that the currency composition of debt and the level of hedging are endogenously determined as optimal firms' responses to a tradeoff between the lower cost of borrowing in foreign debt and the higher risk of such borrowing due to exchange rate uncertainty. Both the composition of debt and the level of hedging depend on common factors such as foreign exchange ...
Report
International banking and cross-border effects of regulation: lessons from the United States
Domestic prudential regulation can have unintended effects across borders and may be less effective in an environment where banks operate globally. Using U.S. micro-banking data for the first quarter of 2000 through the third quarter of 2013, this study shows that some regulatory changes indeed spill over. First, a foreign country?s tightening of limits on loan-to-value ratios and local currency reserve requirements increase lending growth in the United States through the U.S. branches and subsidiaries of foreign banks. Second, a foreign tightening of capital requirements shifts lending by ...
Working Paper
The effects of bank capital on lending: what do we know, and what does it mean?
The effect of bank capital on lending is a critical determinant of the linkage between financial conditions and real activity, and has received especial attention in the recent financial crisis. We use panel-regression techniques--following Bernanke and Lown (1991) and Hancock and Wilcox (1993, 1994)--to study the lending of large bank holding companies (BHCs) and find small effects of capital on lending. We then consider the effect of capital ratios on lending using a variant of Lown and Morgan's (2006) VAR model, and again find modest effects of bank capital ratio changes on lending. These ...