This paper analyzes whether the financial distress of a firm affects the investment decisions of non-distressed competitors. On average, firms in distress impose indirect costs to non-distressed competitors by increasing costs of credit in the industry and hence restricting credit access and...

Theory suggests that by lending to a firm, inside banks gain an informational advantage over non-lender outside banks. This informational gap hinders borrowers from switching lenders due to a winner's curse faced by competing outside banks, leading to hold-up problems. In this paper, we show...

This paper documents significant differences in the financing structure of small firms with managers of diverse cultural backgrounds. To separate the effect of culture from other factors that affect the financing structure of firms, we exploit cultural heterogeneity within a geographical area...

Exploiting a unique opportunity offered by the Italian private equity (PE) market, we examine the hitherto largely unexplored internal rate of return (IRR) of PE investments. Our database covers the entire universe of transactions sponsored by Italian PE investors in Italy up to 2007 and offers...

We analyze the use of derivatives in Italian equity mutual funds from December 2002 to May 2007. We find that the average asset allocation in derivatives increased considerably during this time frame, roughly coinciding with the harmonization of Italian regulation of mutual funds to European...

We estimate the economic impact of climate change by exploiting variation in local temperature across suppliers of the same client. We find that suppliers experiencing a 1°C increase in average daily temperature decrease their sales by 2%. The effect is more pronounced among suppliers in...

We estimate the economic costs of financial distress due to lost sales, by exploiting cross-supplier variation in real estate assets and leverage and the timing of real estate shocks. We show that for the same client buying from different suppliers, its purchases from distressed suppliers...