A convenience yield represents a difference between yield on a safe bond and yield on a synthetic safe bond, constructed by combining a risky bond with a CDS contract. We explain the shapes of eurozone sovereign convenience curves using a model in which arbitrageurs face higher funding costs on...

We develop distress prediction models for non-financial small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) using a dataset from eight European countries over the period 2000-2009. We examine idiosyncratic and systematic covariates and find that macro conditions and bankruptcy codes add predictive power...

While empirical literature has documented a negative relation between default risk and stock returns, the theory suggests that default risk should be positively priced. We provide an explanation for this "default anomaly", by calculating monthly probabilities of default (PDs) for a large sample...

This paper extends Bresnahan's (1982) test of competition to the two-product case. Applying this extension, as well as Bresnahan's original one-product test to the Finnish banking industry before and after the deregulation of financial markets produces some interesting results. With the two...

This paper suggests that the optimal contract in lending under asymmetric information is a fixed rate loan contract. It is shown that deposit banks have an advantage to provide maturity transformation with fixed rate contracts. This is because the spatial nature of deposit market competition...

In this paper we study industry equilibrium and the effects of integration under the assumptions that 1) firms must use outside financing and 2) they face a moral hazard problem due to the possibility of taking excessive risks.These are typical features of banking and insurance, for instance.We...