This paper presents an optimal contracting theory of short-term firm behavior. Contracts inducing short-sighted managerial behavior arise as shareholders' response to conflicting intergenerational managerial incentives. High-return projects may last longer than the tenure of managers who...

We show a dark-side view of internal capital markets in which one segment exploits the funding advantage of another profitable segment to relax its financial constraints. Results demonstrate that bank holding companies (BHCs) shield their nonbank segments, and not their bank segments, from...

Bank stability depends on information. Regulators can allow banks to release some information about their safety and soundness. This paper shows how dividend regulation and information interact to affect bank stability. In the model, wealth-expropriation, excess cash flow, and signaling...

This paper explores the relationship between bank global exposure and their syndicated loan spreads. Linking syndicated loan information from Dealscan with confidential US bank foreign exposure data and borrower characteristics, we find that more bank global exposure is associated with a higher...

We examine how banks’ technological investments affected their ability to maintain or expand their business in the unprecedented economic recession associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. A one standard deviation increase in our financial technology measure, which describes a bank’s coverage...

We identify a new source of bank consolidation in the United States. For decades, boththe financial and real sides of the economy have experienced considerable consolidation. Weshow that banking-sector consolidation is, in part, a consequence of real-sector consolidation;because small banks are...

We use the Federal Reserve's 2007, 2009 re-interview of 2007 respondents, and 2010 Surveys of Consumer Finances (SCFs) to study how small businesses owned and actively managed by households fared during those turbulent years. Even though the surveys contain extensive data on a broad...