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Working Paper
Bank Complexity, Governance, and Risk
Bank holding companies (BHCs) can be complex organizations, conducting multiple lines of business through many distinct legal entities and across a range of geographies. While such complexity raises the the costs of bank resolution when organizations fail, the effect of complexity on BHCs' broader risk profiles is less well understood. Business, organizational, and geographic complexity can engender explicit trade-offs between the agency problems that increase risk and the diversification, liquidity management, and synergy improvements that reduce risk. The outcomes of such trade-offs may ...
Working Paper
The Effect of Bank Supervision on Risk Taking : Evidence from a Natural Experiment
In this paper, we exploit a natural experiment in which thrifts in several states witnessed an exogenous reduction in supervisory attention to assess the effect of supervision on financial institutions' willingness to take risk. We show that the affected institutions took on much more risk than their unaffected counterparts in other districts that were subject to identical regulations. Subsequent to the emergency enlistment of examiners and supervisors from other parts of the country two years later, additional risk taking by the affected thrifts ceased. We find that the expansion in risk ...
Working Paper
Risk Taking and Interest Rates : Evidence from Decades in the Global Syndicated Loan Market
We study how low interest rates in the United States affect risk taking in the market for cross-border corporate loans. Because banks tend to originate these loans with intent to sell to nonbank investors, we examine risk taking by the broad financial system. To the extent that actions of the Federal Reserve affect U.S. interest rates, our analysis provides evidence of cross-border spillover effects of U.S. monetary policy and highlights the global lending and risk-taking channels. We find that movements in the U.S. interest rates have an important effect on ex-ante credit risk of ...
Working Paper
The Dollar and Corporate Borrowing Costs
We show that U.S. dollar movements affect syndicated loan terms for U.S. borrowers, even for those without trade exposure. We identify the effect of dollar movements using spread and loan amount adjustments during the syndication process. Using this high-frequency, within loan variation, we find that a one standard deviation increase in the dollar index increases spreads by up to 15 basis points and reduces loan amounts and underpricing by up to 2 percent and 7 basis points, respectively. These effects are concentrated in dollar appreciations. Our results suggest that global factors reflected ...