This paper provides a unified explanation for the existence, time-series variation, and recent boom of the Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC). We begin by documenting four empirical patterns regarding U.S. SPACs: (1) SPAC issuance boomed in 2007 prior to the Global Financial Crisis and...

We explore the role of consumer risk appetite in the initiation of credit cycles and as an early trigger of the U.S. mortgage crisis. We analyze a panel data set of mortgages originated between the years 2000 and 2009 and follow their performance up to 2014. After controlling for all the usual...

Bharath and Shumway (2008) provide evidence that shows that it is the functional form of Merton’s (1974) distance to default (DD) model that makes it useful and important for predicting defaults. In this paper, we investigate whether the default predictability of the Merton DD model would be...

Some projects take time to build or are slow to yield cash flows. This may impact the dynamics of investment and liquidity management, although few studies test their financial implications. We exploit the peculiar advantages of copper mines as a laboratory to identify cash-flow sensitivities....

This paper examines the unique ability of The Model: a structural credit risk model proposed in Buellesbach (2015), to match the market in ways unmatched by other well-known structural models. The Model demonstrates the capacity to accurately value firms' equity and debt across the entire credit...

This article is the first one that analyzes the choice between crowdfunding and traditional financing as a security design problem. The value of this research comes from several points: 1) the origin of crowdfunding and its features has not been completely explained; 2) crowdfunding regulation is...

This paper examines how consumers react to the financial distress of durable goods manufacturers by looking at the Swedish new car market. We employ a difference-in-differences matching methodology whereby we compare sales of carmaker Saab with those of a carefully constructed control group of...