During the 2010s, the number of community banks in the United States declined by almost one-third, a trend that has worried many stakeholders including communities losing their primary bank, regulators, and the industry itself. This paper provides evidence that the disappearance of community...

We examine whether religion affects the terms of bank loans. We hypothesize that lenders value the traits of religious adherents, such as risk aversion, ethical behavior and honesty, and thus offer favorable loan terms to religious borrowers. Consistent with this hypothesis, we find that...

Motivated by a debate on the effect of debt on firms' product market performance, I examine the effect of lines of credit on firms' future profits. Consistent with the notion that lines of credit provide firms with unique financial flexibility and enhance their strategic position within the...

[...]In this paper, we study the strength of incentive featuresin banks’ top-management compensation contracts. Weexamine the properties of bank-management compensationstructures, including pay-performance sensitivity, using datafrom 1992 to 2000. Based on existing theory, we hypothesizethat...

We study CEO compensation in the banking industry by considering banks' unique claim structure in the presence of two types of agency problems: the standard managerial agency problem and the risk-shifting problem between shareholders and debt holders. We empirically test two hypotheses derived...