On September 21st, 2016, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) embarked on a new unconventional monetary policy, called yield curve control (YCC). We show that YCC creates an arbitrage opportunity in an otherwise frictionless and arbitrage-free government bond market which financial institutions can exploit....

We analyze reductions in bank credit using a natural experiment where unprecedented flooding differentially affected banks that were more exposed to flooded regions in Pakistan. Using a unique dataset that covers the universe of consumer loans in Pakistan and this exogenous shock to bank...