We provide causal evidence that adverse capital shocks to banks affect their borrowers' performance negatively. We use an exogenous shock to the U.S. banking system during the Russian crisis of Fall 1998 to separate the effect of borrowers' demand of credit from the supply of credit by the...

We show that finance influences innovation by young private firms, an important source of long-term economic growth. We develop a simple theoretical model that predicts that a decrease (increase) in banks' bargaining power vis-a-vis entrepreneurs increases (decreases) both the volume and...

We document empirical support for a key micro-level channel --- innovation by young, private firms --- through which financial sector deregulation affects economic growth. We find that intrastate banking deregulation, which increased the local market power of banks, decreased the level and risk...