Which markets do institutions use to change exposure to credit risk? Using a unique data set of transactions in corporate bonds and credit default swaps (CDS) by large financial institutions, we show that simultaneous transactions in both markets are rare, with an average institution having an...

While both size and complexity are important for the largest U.S. bank holding companies (BHCs), specific types of complexity and their patterns across banks are not well understood. We introduce a range of measures of organizational, business, and geographic complexity. Comparing 2007 with...

This paper presents a new measure of capital flow pressures in the form of a recast exchange market pressure index. The measure captures pressures that materialize in actual international capital flows as well as pressures that result in exchange rate adjustments. The formulation is...

We show that insurance companies have almost nonupled their investments in collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) in the post-crisis period, reaching total holdings of $125 billion in 2019. The growth in CLOs’ investments has far outpaced that of loans and corporate bonds, and was...

How do insiders respond to regulatory oversight? History suggests that they form sophisticated networks to share information and circumvent regulation. We develop a theory of the formation and regulation of information transmission networks. We show that agents with sufficiently complex networks...

Ratios that indicate the statistical significance of a fund's alpha typically appraise its performance. A growing literature suggests that even in the absence of any ability to predict returns, holding options positions on the benchmark assets or trading frequently can significantly enhance...

Do investors confuse the quality of a firm with its attractiveness as an investment? If so, shares of well-run companies will be bid up too high and subsequently earn negative abnormal returns. Our analysis of Fortune magazine's annual survey of quot;America's Most Admired Companiesquot; for...

This paper analyzes the recommendations of common stocks made by the investment newsletters followed by the Hulbert Financial Digest. We conclude that, taken as a whole, the securities that newsletters recommend do not outperform appropriate benchmarks. Our data provide modest evidence that the...

We examine how professional traders behave in two financial market experiments; we contrast professional traders' behavior to that of undergraduate students, the typical experimental subject pool. In our first experiment, both sets of participants trade an asset over multiple periods after...

We find that competition from payday lenders leads depository institutions to raise overdraft fees and reduce the availability of “free” checking accounts. We attribute this rise in prices partly to adverse selection created by banks’ practice of charging a flat fee regardless of the...