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Working Paper
Examining the Financial Accelerator: Bank Responses to the 2014 Oil Price Shock
We exploit the 2014 decline in oil prices to understand how banks change contract terms for distressed firms. Using panel data on new and existing loans, we find that firms most financially affected by the 2010 oil price shock initially increased their use of credit. However, those same firms ultimately saw increased borrowing costs, smaller loan sizes, and fewer originations and renewals than less affected firms as the oil price decline persisted. We then demonstrate that credit spreads rose more than might be predicted based on changes in firm risk alone, suggesting that lending standards ...
Journal Article
Have the trends in housing bottomed out?
On a national level, the number of vacant homes is declining, as is the percentage of mortgages in serious delinquency. However, the demand for housing hasn't picked up, nor have prices.
Journal Article
The Global Pandemic and Run on Shadow Banks
In March, the global coronavirus pandemic led to a period of financial stress in which credit conditions tightened at an unprecedented pace. Elements of this stress period can be explained as a classic run on “shadow banks”—nonbank financial institutions that fund long-term assets with short-term debt. Although timely Federal Reserve interventions restored some calm to markets, shadow banks remain vulnerable to future runs because they lack the safeguards available to regulated depository institutions.
Journal Article
The microfinance revolution: an overview
The Nobel Prize committee awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize to Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank "for their efforts to create economic and social development from below." The microfinance revolution has come a long way since Yunus first provided financing to the poor in Bangladesh. The committee has recognized microfinance as "an important liberating force" and an "ever more important instrument in the struggle against poverty." Although several authors have provided comprehensive surveys of microfinance, our aim is somewhat more modest: This article is intended as a ...
Journal Article
Mortgage originations: 2000-2006
Working Paper
Sectoral Loan Concentration and Bank Performance (2001-2014)
Sectoral loan concentration is an important factor in bank performance. We develop a measure of sectoral loan concentration and study how community bank performance and the size-performance relationship vary with loan concentration and changes in loan concentration. The size-profitability relationship varies with concentration in the residential real-estate (RRE) sector. Higher RRE concentration is associated with lower returns especially for larger community banks?banks with assets totaling a billion or more. Concentration in other sectors, such as agriculture and commercial real estate ...
Working Paper
Market Integration and Bank Risk-Taking
Using a workhorse model of bank competition and risk-taking, we show that increased competition from market integration affects bank risk-taking in ways beyond a simple increase in the number of competitor banks. Research has shown that increased competition in the form of an increase in the number of competitor banks can reduce risk-taking—the bank-competitor effect. Market integration not only increases the number of banks, but also the number of potential customers (depositors and borrowers) available to each bank. Increases in the potential customer base induces banks to behave more ...
Journal Article
Flight to safety and U.S. Treasury securities
As in most crises, investors turned to Treasuries in droves over the past couple of years, even as yields declined.
Working Paper
Competition and Bank Fragility
Journal Article
Corporate response to distress: evidence from the Asian financial crisis
This paper provides a comprehensive examination of corporate responses to financial distress during an economy-wide crisis, specifically through the restructuring of assets (through asset sales, mergers, or liquidations) and/or liabilities. Using firm-level data from five countries hardest hit by the East Asian financial crisis of 1997-98, this study contrasts the effects of financial and corporate governance variables on restructuring choices. The study finds that, during a crisis, financial constraints and corporate governance each have a large effect on the restructuring choice.