Societal trust and banks’ funding structure

Based on a large sample of U.S. public and private banks from 2000 to 2017, this paper investigates the implications of the county-level societal trust for banks’ funding structure. By using social capital as the proxy for societal trust, we find a significantly positive relationship between societal trust and the core deposits. This finding supports the argument that banks have greater access to retail deposits when they are located in regions …