We study the impacts of global financial sanctions on banks and their corporate borrowers in Russia. Financial sanctions were consecutively imposed between 2014 and 2019, allowing targeted (but not yet sanctioned) banks to adapt their international and domestic exposures in advance. Using a staggered difference-in-differences approach with in-advance adaptation to anticipated treatment, we establish that targeted banks immediately reduced their foreign assets and actually increased their international borrowings, compared to similar other banks. Once sanctioned, however, these banks not only further reduced their foreign assets but also turned to decrease their international borrowings while facing considerable outflow of domestic private deposits. The introduction of government support prevented the banks' disorderly failures and resulted in credit reshuffling: the banks contracted their lending to the domestic corporate sector by at least 4% of GDP and increased household lending by almost the same magnitude, which mostly offset the total economic loss. Further, we introduce a two-stage treatment diffusion approach that flexibly addresses potential spillovers of the sanctions to private banks with political connections. Using unique hand-collected board membership and bank location data, our approach shows that, throughout this period, politically-connected banks were not all equally recognized as potential sanction targets. Finally, using the syndicated loan data, we establish that the real negative effects of sanctions materialized only when sanctioned firms were borrowing from sanctioned banks. (E65, F34, G21, G41, H81.)

We examine how tax evasion affects offshore information production. Using the Foreign

Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) as an exogenous shock, we document that affected

offshore asset management companies significantly enhance their performance as a response. This improvement comes from better information processing and is more substantial for tax-sensitive companies. Other policies related to fees and portfolio-based tax management are less affected. Our results reveal a novel substitution effect between tax evasion and information production, suggesting that curbing offshore tax evasion can help improve competitiveness and efficiency in the global asset management industry and related markets.

Increased interdependencies across countries have led to calls for greater harmonization of regulations to prevent local shock from spilling over to other countries. Using the rulemaking process of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS), this paper studies the process through which harmonization is achieved. Through leaked voting records, we document that the probability of a regulator opposing an initiative increases if their domestic national champion (NC) opposes the new rule, particularly when the proposed rule disproportionately affects them. Next, we show that smaller banks, even when they collectively have a higher share in the domestic market, do not have any impact on regulators’ stand – suggesting that regulators’ support for NCs is not guided by their national interest. Further, we find the effect is driven by regulators who had prior experience working in large banks. Finally, we show this unanimous decision-making process results in significant watering down of proposed rules. Overall, the results highlight the limits of harmonization of international financial regulation.