Data show that sovereign risk reduces liquidity, increases funding cost and risk of banks highly exposed to it. I build a model that rationalizes this fact. Banks act as delegated monitors and invest in risky projects and in risky sovereign bonds. As investors hear rumors of increased sovereign...

This paper uses recent legislation in Austria to establish a link between sovereign reputation and yield spreads. In 2009, Hypo Alpe Adria International, a bank previously co-owned by the regional government of Carinthia, had been nationalized by Austria's central government in order to avoid a...

In traditional portfolio theory, risk management is limited to the choice of the relative weights of the riskless asset and a diversified basket of risky securities, respectively. Yet in industry, risk management represents a central aspect of asset management, with distinct responsibilities and...

Who gains from inter-corporate credit? To answer this question we measure the impact of the announcements of inter-corporate loans in China on the stock prices of the firms involved. We find that the average abnormal return for the issuers of inter-corporate loans is significantly negative,...

We assess the degree of market fragmentation in the euro-area corporate bond market by disentangling the determinants of the risk premium paid on bonds at origination. By looking at over 2,400 bonds we are able to isolate the country-specific effects which are a suitable indicator of the market...

This study looks at the interrelationship between fiscal policy and safe assets as there is surprisingly little analysis about this beyond fleeting references. The study argues that from a certain point more public debt will not "buy" more safety: countries face a kind of "safe-assets Laffer...

We examine the dynamics of assets under management (AUM) and management fees at the portfolio manager level in the closed-end fund industry. We find that managers capitalize on good past performance and favorable investor perception about future performance, as reflected in fund premiums,...

This paper shows theoretically and empirically that beta- and volatility-based low risk anomalies are driven by return skewness. The empirical patterns con- cisely match the predictions of our model which generates skewness of stock returns via default risk. With increasing downside risk, the...

We analyze global data about electricity generation and document that the risk exposure of a firm's owners and its workers depends on competitors' ability or willingness to change their output in response to productivity shocks. Competitor inflexibility appears to be a risk factor: the sales of...

Directors have traditionally been elected by a plurality of the votes cast. This means that in uncontested elections, a candidate who receives even a single vote is elected. Proponents of "shareholder democracy" have advocated a shift to a majority voting rule in which a candidate must receive a...