Underlying idiosyncratic and illiquidity risks are suppressed in infrequently reported indexes of house prices and rents. Idiosyncratic risks result from bid-ask spreads for prices and rents. Time series autocovariances generate a distribution of prices and rents. Capital gains and rent-price...

An underlying assumption in the executive compensation literature is that there is a national labor market for CEOs. The urban economics literature, however, documents higher ability among workers in large metropolitans, which results in a real and stable urban wage premium. In this paper, we...

We augment the LLSV creditor rights index with a new "restructuring index" that measures the incentives provided to creditors to grant concessions outside formal bankruptcy. We study the joint impact of the two indexes on a firm's leverage policy. We show that the two indexes have at most a...

On 15 December 2015, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) passed Rule 3211, requiring audit firms registered with PCAOB in the U.S. to disclose the audit engagement partner's name in the Form AP, effective 31 January 2017. The regulation aims to improve the transparency and...

We study CEO compensation in the banking industry by considering banks’ unique claim structure in the presence of two types of agency problems: the standard managerial agency problem and the risk-shifting problem between shareholders and debtholders. We empirically test two hypotheses derived...

We examine changes in the corporate tax rate across the U.S. and their implications on the pricing and quantity of loans. We find an asymmetric effect on the cost of credit: loan spreads decrease by approximately 5.9 basis points in response to a one percentage tax cut, but they are insensitive...

Using lenders becoming members of the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) as a plausible exogeneous shock, we examine whether and how lenders' commitment to transparent climate-related disclosures affects borrower firms' environmental performance. We find that client firms...

More than 80% of US syndicated loans contain at least one fee type and contracts typically specify a menu of spread and different types of fees. We test the predictions of existing theories about the main purposes of fees and provide supporting evidence that: (1) fees are used to Price options...

We analyze differences in the pricing of syndicated loans between U.S. and European loans. For credit lines, U.S. borrowers pay significantly higher spreads, but also lower fees, resulting in similar total costs of borrowing in both markets. For term loans, U.S. firms pay significantly higher...

More than 80% of US syndicated loans contain at least one fee type and contracts typically specify a menu of spread and different types of fees. We test the predictions of existing theories about the main purposes of fees and provide supporting evidence that: (1) fees are used to price options...