[The draft below is the original of the “Active Depositors” publication, which included global bank scandal results. The intention was to create a more complete list of global bank scandals and to examine the actual extent of depositor interest gobally, understand whether certain types of scandals were more important and whether bank’s ESG strategies might have intermediating effects. I share the original global bank scandal data set here and hope someone in the future researches and documents the complete story]

Depositors Disciplining Banks: The Impact of Scandals

Job Market Paper

Do depositors react to negative non-financial information about their banks? By using branch level data for the U.S., I show that banks, that financed the highly controversial Dakota Access Pipeline, experienced significant decreases in deposit growth, especially in branches located closest to the pipeline. These effects were greater for branches located in environmentally or socially conscious counties and data suggests that savings banks were among the main beneficiaries of this depositor movement. Using a global hand-collected dataset on tax evasion, corruption and environmental scandals related to banks, I show that negative deposit growth as a reaction to scandals is a more widespread phenomenon.

1) Stigler Center Working Paper Series 2) SSRN