Bank regulators are required to consider a bank's record of providing credit to low- and moderate-income neighborhoods and individuals in approving bank applications for mergers and acquisitions. We provide evidence that banks self-regulate by strategically increasing their lending to these...

The near-failure on September 16, 2008, of American International Group (AIG) was an iconic moment in the financial crisis. Two large bets on real estate made with funding that was vulnerable to bank-run like behavior on the part of funders pushed AIG to the brink of bankruptcy. AIG used...

We show that individuals who have experienced a systemic banking crisis are 11 percentage points less likely to use banks in the U.S. than otherwise similar individuals who emigrated from the same country but did not live through a crisis. This finding is robust to controlling for exposure to...

Immigrants from countries with more effective institutions are more likely than other immigrants to have a relationship with a bank and to use formal financial markets more extensively. The evidence that a country's institutional environment shapes beliefs--and by extension the use of financial...