Bank Branching Deregulation and the Syndicated Loan Market
By Jan Keil, Karsten Müller
Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis | June 2020
DOI
doi.org/10.1017/S0022109019000607
Citation
Keil, Jan., Müller, Karsten. Bank Branching Deregulation and the Syndicated Loan Market Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis doi.org/10.1017/S0022109019000607.
Copyright
Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 2020
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Abstract
How do changes in banking regulation affect the syndicated loan market? Because branch networks and loan syndication both enable banks to diversify geographical credit risk, we investigate the staggered implementation of the Riegle–Neal Interstate Branching and Banking Efficiency Act of 1994. Exploiting that the act only changed the legal framework for out-of-state commercial banks, we find that branching deregulation decreased syndicated loan issuance but spurred bilateral lending to corporations. Consistent with a supply-driven substitution effect, this shift is also reflected in interest rate spreads. Our results suggest that changes to banking regulation can substantially alter credit allocation across loan types.

Jan Keil is an Assistant Professor of Finance at the Indian School of Business (ISB). His research focuses on disruptive and technology-driven change in financial intermediation, including payments, banking, consumer finance, and money. One current project explores the geopolitical motivations behind central bank digital currencies and their effect on payment firms (revised and resubmitted to the Journal of Finance). Another project analyses the economics of buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) for e-commerce merchants (revised and resubmitted to the Journal of Financial Economics).

Professor Keil has published in the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis and served as a referee for the Review of Financial Studies. He has worked with Manju Puri, Tobias Berg, Thorsten Beck, and Steven Ongena.

He has received research grants from the German National Science Foundation (DFG) and the University of Zurich. Prior to joining ISB, he was affiliated with Humboldt University in Berlin and the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica. Professor Keil holds a PhD in Economics from the New School for Social Research, New York, and an MA-equivalent diploma in Political Science from Goethe University, Frankfurt.

Jan Keil
Jan Keil