the banking sector (DePaoli et al., 2009). However, there are very few studies that document the direct contribution of the banking sector in these types of episodes. This is understandable, as crises are broad events in which it becomes difficult to identify the impact of individual contributors. The recent euro-area sovereign debt crisis, with its prolonged duration and heterogeneous effects across countries, has proven to be fertile grounds for analyzing the behavior of banks in periods of sovereign stress. We rely on a set of new studies focusing on this period to analyze the real economic impact of sovereign and banking crises.
4.1 Lending
Banks close relationship to its domestic sovereign may affect its lending activity during periods of sovereign stress. As noted before, there are several channels through which deteriorating conditions for the sovereign may affect banks’ level of capitalization and their access to external financing. In turn, these shocks to banks’ balance sheets also affect their lending activity. However, it is very difficult to empirically isolate the direct and causal effect of sovereign stress on banks’ supply of credit. Sovereign crises are typically accompanied by recession that may affect borrower’s demand for credit, and these crises may be triggered themselves, by problems in the banking sector. These confounding effects make it difficult to identify the amplification mechanism provided by banks during a sovereign event.
Despite these identification problems, some studies have attempted to test the impact of sovereign distress on bank lending. Focusing on a cross-country sample of sovereign default episodes, Gennaioli, Martin, and Rossi (2013a) find that aggregate private credit falls more in those countries where the banking system is more exposed to sovereign debt securities. These results are consistent with their theoretical model, in which banks optimally hold public bonds as
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