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We document that central banks are significantly more likely to report slightly positive profits than slightly negative profits, especially amid greater political pressure, the public's receptiveness to more extreme political views, and when governors are reappointable. The propensity to report small profits over small losses is correlated with more lenient monetary policy and higher inflation. We conclude that profitability concerns, although absent from standard theory, are present and effective in practice. These findings inform a debate about the political economy of central banking, monetary stability, and the effectiveness of non-traditional central banking.

We document that central banks are significantly more likely to report slightly positive profits than slightly negative profits. The discontinuity in the profit distribution is (i) more pronounced amid greater political or public pressure, the public's receptiveness to more extreme political views, and agency frictions arising from governor career concerns, but absent when no such factors are present, and (ii) correlated with more lenient monetary policy inputs and greater inflation. These findings indicate that profitability concerns, while absent from standard theoretical models of central banking, are both present and effective in practice, and inform a theoretical debate about monetary stability and the effectiveness and riskiness of non-traditional central banking.

We provide new evidence on how deposit funding affects bank lending. For identification, we exploit a tax reform in Italy that induced households to substitute bank bonds with deposits. We find that banks with larger increases in deposits expand the supply of credit lines and long-term credit to low-risk firms. Additional evidence indicates that these results are consistent with theories emphasizing the demandable nature of the deposit contract rather than theories stressing the stability of deposit funding due to government guarantees. In this regard, we show that banks under stress face large runs on retail deposits, but not on retail bonds.