Effects of Bank Lending Shocks on Real Activity: Evidence from a Financial Crisis a a Emanuela Giacomini *, Xiaohong (Sara) Wang a Graduate School of Business, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-7168, USA January 15, 2012 Abstract U.S. banks experienced dramatic declines in capital and liquidity during the financial crisis of 2007-2009. We study the effect of shocks on banks’ capital and liquidity positions on their borrowers’ investment decisions. The recent financial crisis serves as a natural experiment in the sense that the crisis was not expected by banks ex-ante, and had a detrimental but heterogeneous impact on banks’ capitals and liquidity positions ex-post. Consistent with our hypothesis, we find that borrowers of more affected banks reduced more investment during the crisis. We find that borrowing firms whose banks have a higher level of non-performing loans and lower level of tier one capital, hold less liquid asset, and experience greater stock price drop tend to invest less in the capital expenditure when comparing investment before and during the crisis. Shocks on banks, however, have limited effect on firm R&D expenditures and net working capital. Our results suggest that shocks on banks’ capital and liquidity positions negatively affect borrowers’ investment levels, in particular their capital expenditures. EFM Classification Codes: 510, 520. * Corresponding author. Tel.: 352 392 8913; fax: 352 392 0301. E-mail address:
[email protected] (Emanuela Giacomini),
[email protected] (Xiaohong (Sara) Wang). 1 1. Introduction During the 2007-2009 financial crisis, U.S. banks experienced dramatic declines in capital from bad loan write-downs and collateralized debt obligation value plunges.