Capital surcharges on global systemically important banks (GSIBs) decrease lending to firms but do not have any real effects. Banks subject to higher surcharges reduce loan commitments relative to other banks. In response to surcharges, GSIBs also lower their estimates of firm risk. Firms' total...

We examine the effects of the supplementary leverage ratio (SLR) on large banks’ participation in U.S. Treasury markets. Exploiting exogenous shocks to credit line drawdowns and data on bank’s holdings of Treasury securities, we show that an increase in banks’ balance sheets size reduces...

We provide the first empirical evidence that zombie firms---highly levered firms with weak growth prospects---are not a prominent feature of the U.S. economy and that U.S. banks do not lend to such firms. Using confidential supervisory data on firm-bank relationships during the 2014--2019...

We show that U.S. banks do not engage in zombie lending to firms of deteriorating profitability, irrespective of capital levels and exposure to such firms. In contrast, unregulated financial intermediaries do, originating more and cheaper loans to these firms. We establish these results using...