We provide new evidence on how deposit funding affects bank lending. For identification, we exploit a tax reform in Italy that induced households to substitute bank bonds with deposits. We find that banks with larger increases in deposits expand the supply of credit lines and long-term credit to...

Do banks with low capital extend excessive credit to weak firms, and does this matter for aggregate efficiency? Using a unique data set that covers almost all bank-firm relationships in Italy in the period 2004-2013, we find that, during the Eurozone financial crisis: (i) Under-capitalized banks...