Functional distance and US global banks’ foreign branch lending
研究了功能距离（总部与东道国在地理、语言、文化上的距离）如何影响美国全球银行外国分行的贷款行为，发现地理和语言距离会减少当地贷款，而东道国的制度质量能缓解这种影响。
This paper examines the significance of functional distance in explaining the lending behavior of foreign branches of global banks. We operationalize functional distance, or the distance between the global bank’s headquarters and the host country of the foreign branch, along a geographic, linguistic, and cultural dimension. Analyzing the lending activities of US global banks’ foreign branches in 38 countries from 2001 to 2020, we find that geographic and linguistic functional distance has an adverse effect on local lending. We further find that a host country’s institutional quality can moderate the effect of functional distance on local lending.