Assuming benevolent managers, the debt-overhang problem suggests that distressed firms generally refrain from issuing equity. In contrast, agency theory predicts that distressed firm managers have strong self-interests to finance even deteriorating projects through equity issuance. This paper...

Do rating agencies increase or decrease financial market stability? This paper analyzes whether credit rating agencies may help to avoid inefficient self-fulfilling credit defaults. If investors follow risk-dominant strategies, we show that rating announcements and investors' private information...

On September 17, 2009, Boston Private Financial Holdings (BPFH) sold its Coral Gables, Florida based Gibraltar Private Bank & Trust subsidiary for $93 million. On October 27, 2009, Scott Rothstein fled to Morocco on a private jet before turning himself in to authorities. Mr. Rothstein has...

Standard credit risk models cannot explain the observed clustering of default, sometimes described as "credit contagion." This paper provides the first empirical analysis of credit contagion via direct counterparty effects. We examine the wealth effects of bankruptcy announcements on creditors...

We show that the post earnings announcement drift (PEAD) is stronger for conglomerates thansingle-segment firms. Conglomerates, on average, are larger than single segment firms, so it isunlikely that limits-to-arbitrage drive the difference in PEAD. Rather, we hypothesize that marketparticipants...

The reaction of asset markets to the announcement of monetary policy measures is regarded as crucial for the transmission mechanism of monetary policy. I test whether the cross-sections of European equities and CDS show responses to monetary shocks which are in accordance with the goals behind...

Whether credit rating agencies provide investors with private credit risk information is a central yet open empirical question. I use the introduction of a new rating type by Standard & Poor's reflecting expected recovery outcomes to isolate the effect of the information component in credit...

Using a difference-in-differences approach, we show that relaxation of short-sale constraints helps to filter out low-quality borrowers from the bank loan market. Treated firms that can still borrow from banks enjoy a lower loan spread, compared with control firms without this sorting mechanism....

We investigate whether the daily betas of individual stocks vary with the release of firm-specific news in an emerging market. Using intraday prices of all stocks traded on the Borsa Istanbul, Turkey over the period 2005-2013, we find evidence that average market betas increase significantly...

We document that suppliers to purely financially distressed companies that are highly likely to reorganize in bankruptcy incur little or no spillover costs. In contrast, suppliers to economically distressed firms experience large losses in market value which are linked to proxies for the cost of...