When the Federal Reserve (Fed) expanded its balance sheet via quantitative easing (QE), commercial banks financed reserve holdings with deposits and reduced their average maturity. They also issued lines of credit to corporations. However, when the Fed halted its balance-sheet expansion in 2014...

Banks incurred large losses from their exposure to committed but unfunded LBO deals during the global financial crisis (GFC). Banks learned from their GFC experience as a group and adjusted their lending behavior in LBO financing. Debt financing for LBO target firms has declined, while private...

When the Federal Reserve expanded its balance sheet via large-scale asset purchases (quantitative easing) in recent years, we find an increase in commercial bank deposits with a shortening of their maturity, and also an increase in outstanding bank lines of credit to corporations. However, when...

Addressing climate change as well as the role of banks in this process requires better measures about the exposures of firms and banks to climate related risks. We usually have data for large, publicly listed firms due to enhanced disclosure requirements. In this paper, we provide first...

This article surveys the theory on zombie lending incentives and the consequences of zombie lending for the real economy. It also offers a historical perspective by reviewing the growing empirical evidence on zombie lending along three dimensions: (a) the role of undercapitalized banks, (b)...

Over the past two decades, banks have increasingly focused on offering contingent credit in the form of credit lines as a primary means of corporate borrowing. We review the existing body of research regarding the rationales for banks' provision of liquidity insurance in the form of credit...

Excessive sovereign debt exposures of banks contributed to the gravity of the financial and sovereign debt crisis in 2011 and 2012, as well as to the slow and asymmetric recovery of European countries. Various policies that improve banks' resilience were introduced in recent years, however the...

Corporate borrowing has substantially changed over the last two decades. In this paper, we investigate changes in borrowing of U.S. publicly listed firms along trends in five key areas: (1) the funding mix of firms and the importance of balance-sheet versus off-balance-sheet borrowing; (2) the...

Data on firm-loan-level daily credit line drawdowns in the United States expose a corporate “dash for cash” induced by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the first phase of the crisis, which was characterized by extreme precaution and heightened aggregate risk, all firms drew down bank credit lines...