This paper examines how European banks adjusted lending at the onset of the pandemic depending on their local exposure to the COVID-19 outbreak and capitalization. Using a bank-level COVID-19 exposure measure, we show that higher exposure to COVID-19 led to a relative increase in worse-capitalized banks’ loans whereas their better-capitalized peers decreased their lending more. At the same time, only better-capitalized banks experienced a significantly larger increase in their delinquent and restructured loans. These findings are in line with the zombie lending literature that banks with low capital have an incentive to issue more loans during contraction times to help their weaker borrowers so that they can avoid loan loss recognition and write-offs on their capital.

本文探讨了欧洲银行在疫情爆发时如何根据当地对 COVID-19 疫情的影响和资本规模调整贷款。使用银行层面的 COVID-19 暴露衡量指标，我们发现，较高的 COVID-19 暴露导致资本较差的银行的贷款相对增加，而资本较好的银行则减少了更多的贷款。与此同时，只有资本较好的银行的拖欠贷款和重组贷款才会出现大幅增长。这些发现与僵尸贷款文献一致，即资本较低的银行有动力在紧缩时期发放更多贷款，以帮助实力较弱的借款人，从而避免贷款损失确认和资本冲销。