The Journal of Finance

The Journal of Finance publishes leading research across all the major fields of finance. It is one of the most widely cited journals in academic finance, and in all of economics. Each of the six issues per year reaches over 8,000 academics, finance professionals, libraries, and government and financial institutions around the world. The journal is the official publication of The American Finance Association, the premier academic organization devoted to the study and promotion of knowledge about financial economics.

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Zombie Credit and (Dis‐)Inflation: Evidence from Europe

Published: 04/11/2024   |   DOI: 10.1111/jofi.13342

VIRAL V. ACHARYA, MATTEO CROSIGNANI, TIM EISERT, CHRISTIAN EUFINGER

We show that “zombie credit”—subsidized credit to nonviable firms—has a disinflationary effect. By keeping these firms afloat, zombie credit creates excess aggregate supply, thereby putting downward pressure on prices. Granular European data on inflation, firms, and banks confirm this mechanism. Markets affected by a rise in zombie credit experience lower firm entry and exit, capacity utilization, markups, and inflation, as well as a misallocation of capital and labor, which results in lower productivity, investment, and value added. If weakly capitalized banks were recapitalized in 2009, inflation in Europe would have been up to 0.21 percentage points higher post‐2012.


The Anatomy of the Transmission of Macroprudential Policies

Published: 08/10/2022   |   DOI: 10.1111/jofi.13170

VIRAL V. ACHARYA, KATHARINA BERGANT, MATTEO CROSIGNANI, TIM EISERT, FERGAL MCCANN

We analyze how regulatory constraints on household leverage—in the form of loan‐to‐income and loan‐to‐value limits—affect residential mortgage credit and house prices as well as other asset classes not directly targeted by the limits. Loan‐level data suggest that mortgage credit is reallocated from low‐ to high‐income borrowers and from urban to rural counties. This reallocation weakens the feedback between credit and house prices and slows house price growth in “hot” housing markets. Banks whose lending to households is more affected by the regulatory constraint drive this reallocation, but also substitute their risk‐taking into holdings of securities and corporate credit.