Les banques américaines obtiennent la majeure partie de leur nancement à partir d'une combinaison de dépôts à taux zéro et dépôts portant intérêt. En utilisant les variations démographiques locales comme instruments pour la composition du passif des banques, je montre que lorsque la politique monétaire se resserre, les banques avec une plus grande proportion des dépôts à taux zéro dans leur bilan observent des augmentations supérieures dans le taux payé sur les dépôts portant intérêt. Cela se produit parce que la politique monétaire restrictive réduit la quantité de dépôts à taux zéro disponibles aux banques. Les banques réagissent en émettant plus de dépôts portant intérêt, mais paient un taux d'intérêt qui augmente avec la quantité emprunté. Cette nouvelle preuve étaie l'existence du canal du crédit bancaire de la politique monétaire.

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We study how third-party rating information influences firms' access to bank financing and real outcomes. We exploit a refinement in the rating scale that occurred in France in 2004. The new rules made some firms within each rating class receive a positive rating surprise. We find that such firms enjoy greater and cheaper access to bank credit. In particular, they obtain more credit from previously less informed lenders, and start new bank relationships more easily. Consequently, they rely on equity to a lower extent and invest more. These findings suggest that credit ratings help reducing the hold-up problem and increase competition among banks.

We analyze how public information on past entrepreneurial failure affects entrepreneurs' ability to borrow. We exploit a policy shock from 2013 in France, which eliminated a highly salient public reporting to banks of managers involved in non-fraudulent corporate liquidations. We find that the flag removal makes failed entrepreneurs significantly more likely to restart a business or to borrow from a surviving business, despite the fact that bankers can find the failure information from other public sources for a small cost. Restarters create companies that have a higher probability of default.

This paper studies whether greater competition can mitigate agency problems within banks. We measure the intensity of the agency conflict within a bank by the volume of loans that the bank lends to its insiders (e.g., executives). We first check that these loans are a form of private benefit. By exploiting interstate branching deregulation, we then show that banks react to greater competition by reducing insider lending, especially when the entry of new competitors may more strongly affect bank profitability. Results are robust to using various identification approaches and alternative indicators of agency conflict. We conclude that competitive pressure reduces managerial self-dealing. This paper was accepted by Gustavo Manso, finance.