Credit Card Entrepreneurs
Ufuk Akcigit, Raman Chhina, Seyit Cilasun, Javier Miranda, Nicolas Serrano-Velarde
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 5,
2025
Abstract
Utilizing near real-time QuickBooks data from over 1.6 million small businesses and a targeted survey, this paper highlights the critical role credit card financing plays for small business activity. We examine a two year period beginning in January of 2021. A turbulent period during which, credit card usage by small U.S. businesses nearly doubled, interest payments rose by 60%, and delinquencies reached 2.8%. We find, first, monthly credit card payments were up to three times higher than loan payments during this time. Second, we use targeted surveys of these small businesses to establish credit cards as a key financing source in response to firm-level shocks, such as uncertain cash flows and overdue invoices. Third, we establish the importance of credit cards as an important financial transmission mechanism. Following the Federal Reserve’s rate hikes in early 2022, banks cut credit card supply, leading to a 15.75% drop in balances and a 10% decline in revenue growth, as well as a 1.5% decrease in employment growth among U.S. small businesses. These higher rates also rendered interest payments unsustainable for many, contributing to half of the observed increase in delinquencies. Lastly, a simple heterogeneous firm model with a cash-in-hand constraint illustrates the significant macroeconomic impact of credit card financing on small business activity.
Read article
People
People Doctoral Students PhD Representatives Alumni Supervisors Lecturers Coordinators Doctoral Students Afroza Alam (Supervisor: Reint Gropp ) Julian Andres Diaz Acosta…
See page
Supranational Rules, National Discretion: Increasing versus Inflating Regulatory Bank Capital?
Reint E. Gropp, Thomas Mosk, Steven Ongena, Ines Simac, Carlo Wix
Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis,
No. 2,
2024
Abstract
We study how banks use “regulatory adjustments” to inflate their regulatory capital ratios and whether this depends on forbearance on the part of national authorities. Using the 2011 EBA capital exercise as a quasi-natural experiment, we find that banks substantially inflated their levels of regulatory capital via a reduction in regulatory adjustments — without a commensurate increase in book equity and without a reduction in bank risk. We document substantial heterogeneity in regulatory capital inflation across countries, suggesting that national authorities forbear their domestic banks to meet supranational requirements, with a focus on short-term economic considerations.
Read article
Research Clusters
Three Research Clusters Research Cluster "Economic Dynamics and Stability" Research Questions This cluster focuses on empirical analyses of macroeconomic dynamics and stability.…
See page
Distributional Income Effects of Banking Regulation in Europe
Lars Brausewetter, Melina Ludolph, Lena Tonzer
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 24,
2023
Abstract
We study the impact of stricter and more harmonized banking regulation along the income distribution using household survey data for 25 EU countries. Exploiting country-level heterogeneity in the implementation of European Banking Union directives allows us to control for confounders and identify effects. Our results show that these regulatory reforms aimed at increasing financial system resilience affected households heterogeneously. More stringent regulation reduces income growth for low-income households due to employment exits. Yet it tends to increase growth rates at the top of the distribution both for employee and self-employed income.
Read article
People
People Job Market Candidates Doctoral Students PhD Representatives Alumni Supervisors Lecturers Coordinators Job Market Candidates Tommaso Bighelli Job market paper: "The…
See page
Aleksandr Kazakov, Michael Koetter, Mirko Titze, Lena Tonzer
Abstract
We study whether government subsidies can stimulate bank funding of marginal investment projects and the associated effect on financial stability. We do so by exploiting granular project-level information for the largest regional economic development programme in Germany since 1997: the Improvement of Regional Economic Structures programme (GRW). By combining the universe of subsidised firms to virtually all German local banks over the period 1998-2019, we test whether this large-scale transfer programme destabilised regional credit markets. Because GRW subsidies to firms are destabilised at the EU level, we can use it as an exogenous shock to identify bank responses. On average, firm subsidies do not affect bank lending, but reduce banks’ distance to default. Average effects conflate important bank-level heterogeneity though. Conditional on various bank traits, we show that well capitalised banks with more industry experience expand lending when being exposed to subsidised firms without exhibiting more risky financial profiles. Our results thus indicate that stable banks can act as an important facilitator of regional economic development policies. Against the backdrop of pervasive transfer payments to mitigate Covid-19 losses and in light of far-reaching transformation policies required to green the economy, our study bears important implications as to whether and which banks to incorporate into the design of transfer Programmes.
Read article
Banks’ Funding Stress, Lending Supply, and Consumption Expenditure
H. Evren Damar, Reint E. Gropp, Adi Mordel
Journal of Money, Credit and Banking,
No. 4,
2020
Abstract
We employ a unique identification strategy linking survey data on household consumption expenditure to bank‐level data to estimate the effects of bank funding stress on consumer credit and consumption expenditures. We show that households whose banks were more exposed to funding shocks report lower levels of nonmortgage liabilities. This, however, only translates into lower levels of consumption for low‐income households. Hence, adverse credit supply shocks are associated with significant heterogeneous effects.
Read article
Banks' Funding Stress, Lending Supply and Consumption Expenditure
H. Evren Damar, Reint E. Gropp, Adi Mordel
Abstract
We employ a unique identification strategy linking survey data on household consumption expenditure to bank-level data to estimate the effects of bank funding stress on consumer credit and consumption expenditures. We show that households whose banks were more exposed to funding shocks report lower levels of nonmortgage liabilities. This, however, only translates into lower levels of consumption for low income households. Hence, adverse credit supply shocks are associated with significant heterogeneous effects.
Read article
Sovereign Stress, Banking Stress, and the Monetary Transmission Mechanism in the Euro Area
Oliver Holtemöller, Jan-Christopher Scherer
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 3,
2018
Abstract
In this paper, we investigate to what extent sovereign stress and banking stress have contributed to the increase in the level and in the heterogeneity of nonfinancial firms’ refinancing costs in the Euro area during the European debt crisis and how they did affect the monetary transmission mechanism. We identify the increasing effect of government bond yield spreads (sovereign stress) and the share of non-performing loans (banking stress) on firms’ financing costs using an instrumental-variable approach. Moreover, we estimate both sources of stress to have significantly impaired the monetary transmission mechanism during the European debt crisis.
Read article
