We examine the effect of direct mail (commonly referred to as junk mail) advertising on individual financial decisions by studying consumer choice of home equity debt contracts. Consistent with the theoretical predictions, we find that financial variables underlying the relative pricing of debt...

This paper examines how legal risk, defined as the strength of creditor rights and legal enforcement, affects debt ownership concentration in the project finance loan market. Using a sample of 495 project finance loan tranches from 61 countries, worth $151 billion, we document high levels of...