This paper proposes an early-warning bank risk measure based on the syndicate concentration of recent syndicated loans that a bank participates in. At the bank level, higher values of the measure predict greater risks (i.e., loan loss provisions, idiosyncratic return volatility, default...

This paper investigates the critical role of culture for economic recovery after natural disasters. Using Hurricane Katrina as our laboratory, we find a significant adverse treatment effect for plant-level productivity. However, local religious adherence and larger shares of ancestors with...

This paper examines the effect of finance on long-term economic growth using Bayesian model averaging to address model uncertainty in cross-country growth regressions. The literature largely focuses on financial indicators that assess the financial depth of banks and stock markets. These...

This paper studies whether and how banks’ technology adoption affects the bank lending channel of monetary policy transmission. We construct a new measurement of bank-level technology adoption, which can tell whether the technology is related to the bank’s lending business and which specific...

We survey 149 leading academic researchers on bank capital regulation. The median (average) respondent prefers a 10% (15%) minimum non-risk-weighted equity-to-assets ratio, which is considerably higher than the current requirement. North Americans prefer a significantly higher equity-to-assets...

This study investigates the effects of economy-wide corruption on bad loans across a large sample of countries. The evidence reveals that greater corruption is associated with more bad loans. Loan defaults are lower in faster growing economies, in economies with higher lending rates and in...

​We examine the effect of finance on long-term economic growth using Bayesian model averaging to address model uncertainty in cross-country growth regressions. The literature largely focuses on financial indicators that assess the financial depth of banks and stock markets. We examine these...

This paper investigates the role of technical reserves in the income smoothing behavior of insurance companies. This is one of the first attempts in the literature to trace such relationship in the insurance industry, especially at a multi-country setting. The experience of 770 insurance firms...

We test five hypotheses on whether banks use CDS to hedge corporate loans, provide credit enhancements, obtain regulatory capital relief, and exploit banking relationship and private information. Using new data that link large banks' CDS positions and syndicated lending on individual firms, we...