This paper finds that shareholder-friendly corporate governance is positively associated with bank insolvency risk, as proxied by the Z-score and the Merton's distance to default measure, for an international sample of banks over the 2004-08 period. Banks are special in that"good"corporate...

This paper examines the association between the default risk of foreign bank subsidiaries and their parents during the global financial crisis, with the purpose of understanding what factors can help insulate affiliates from their parents. The paper finds evidence of a significant positive...

Deposit insurance is widely offered in a number of countries as part of a financial system safety net to promote stability. An unintended consequence of deposit insurance is the reduction in the incentive of depositors to monitor banks, which leads to excessive risk-taking. This paper examines...

Did the U.S. government's intervention in the Chrysler reorganization overturn bankruptcy law? Critics argue that the government-sponsored reorganization impermissibly elevated claims of the auto union over those of Chrysler's other creditors. If the critics are correct, businesses might suffer...

The standard measures of distress risk ignore the fact that firm defaults are correlated and that some defaults are more likely to occur in bad times. The paper uses risk premium computed from corporate credit spreads to measure a firm's exposure to systematic variation in default risk. Unlike...

Interest in access to finance has increased significantly in recent years, as growing evidence suggests that lack of access to credit prevents lower-income households and small firms from financing high return investment projects, having an adverse effect on growth and poverty alleviation. This...

The authors compare the two merger control systems currently employed worldwide: a mandatory system based on merger size threshold and a voluntary system with ex-post monitoring and fines. The voluntary system possesses two informational advantages: (i) the enforcement agency employs more...

Proper public procurement practices directly reflect good governance. Transparent and effective procurement practices minimize expenditure and create opportunity. Procurement is an enormous component in the process by which governments build infrastructure, such as schools and hospitals. It...