In a two-stage game, we study under what conditions banks offer phonebanking (first stage). In the second stage, they are competitors in the market for deposits. Offering the phone option creates two opposing effects. The first is a demand effect as depositors strictly prefer to manage some of their financial transactions by phone. The second (strategic) effect is that competition is increased as transaction costs are lowered. Universal phonebanking prevails when the demand effect dominates the strategic effect. Specialization can occur in that one bank offers the phone option while the other does not.

We use administrative and supervisory data at the bank and loan level to investigate the impact of the introduction of covered bonds on the composition of bank balance sheets and bank risk. Covered bonds, despite being collateralized by mortgages, lead to a shift in bank lending from mortgages to corporate loans. Young and low-rated firms in particular receive more credit, suggesting that overall credit risk increases. At the same time, we find that total balance sheet liquidity increases. We identify the channel in a theoretical model and provide empirical evidence: Banks with low initial liquidity and banks with sufficiently high risk-adjusted return on firm lending drive the results.

This paper investigates the critical role of religion in the economic recovery after high-impact natural disasters. Exploiting the 2005 hurricane season in the southeast United States, we document that establishments in counties with higher religious adherence rates saw a significantly stronger recovery in terms of productivity for 2005-2010. Our results further suggest that a particular religious denomination does not drive the effect. We observe that different aspects of religion, such as adherence, shared experiences from ancestors, and institutionalised features, all drive the effect on recovery. Our results matter since they underline the importance of cultural characteristics like religion during and after economic crises.

This paper provides evidence for the propagation of idiosyncratic mortgage supply shocks to the macroeconomy. Based on micro-level data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act for the 1990-2016 period, our results suggest that lender-specific mortgage supply shocks affect aggregate mortgage, house price, and employment dynamics at the regional level. The larger the idiosyncratic shocks to newly issued mortgages, the stronger are mortgage, house price, and employment growth. While shocks at the level of shadow banks significantly affect mortgage and house price dynamics, too, they do not matter much for employment.

This paper provides evidence that banks cut lending to US borrowers as a consequence of a trade shock. This adverse reaction is stronger for banks with higher ex-ante lending to US industries hit by the trade shock. Importantly, I document large heterogeneity in banks‘ reaction depending on their sectoral specialisation. Banks shield industries in which they are specialised in and at the same time reduce the availability of credit to industries they are not specialised in. The latter is driven by low-capital banks and lending to firms that are themselves hit by the trade shock. Banks‘ adjustments have adverse real effects.

Events which have an adverse or positive effect on some firms can disseminate through the economy to firms which are not directly affected. By exploiting the first large sovereign bond purchase programme of the ECB, this paper investigates whether more lending to some firms spill over to firms in the surroundings of direct beneficiaries. Firms operating in the same industry and region invest less and reduce employment. The paper shows the importance to consider spillover effects when assessing unconventional monetary policies: Differences between treatment and control groups can be entirely attributed to negative effects on the control group.