Events at CERGE-EI

Let us invite you to a Brown Bag Seminar by Mikhail Mamonov (CERGE-EI PhD student)
on Thursday, September 22, 2022, at 14:00 in room 402. 

You can join also online: Lifesize link: https://call.lifesizecloud.com/15797360, password: 2463

Presenter: Mikhail Mamonov joint with Anna Pestova and Steven Ongena

Title: "Crime and Punishment? How Russian Banks Anticipated and Dealt with Global Financial Sanctions"

Abstract: "We study the impact of global financial sanctions on the Russian banks and economy. Financial sanctions were consecutively imposed between 2014 and 2019, allowing potentially-targeted (but not yet sanctioned) banks to adjust their international and domestic exposures. Compared to similar other banks, targeted banks immediately reduced their foreign assets. Yet, to deal with considerable domestic depositor withdrawals, targeted banks at first actually expanded their foreign liabilities. Once sanctioned, however, banks not only further reduced their foreign assets but also started to decrease their foreign liabilities as well. Despite the introduction of government support the sanctioned banks substantially contracted their lending to the domestic corporate sector resulting in a potential loss in domestic GDP of at least 4%. However, at the same time the sanctioned banks increased household lending by almost the same magnitude, mostly offsetting the total economic loss. Further, unique hand-collected board membership and location data coupled with a two-stage difference-in-differences approach that flexibly addresses potential treatment diffusion allows us to show that throughout this period state-controlled banks were not all equally recognized as potential sanction targets. Finally, using the syndicated loan data we establish that the negative real effects of sanctions materialized only when sanctioned banks were lending to sanctioned firms."