Productive firms can access credit markets directly by issuing corporate bonds or by borrowing through financial intermediaries. In this paper, we study the cyclical properties of corporate credit provision through these two types of debt instruments in major advanced economies. We argue that...

Using data on balance sheets of both financial and nonfinancial sectors of the economy, we use a "demand system" approach to study how lender composition and willingness to provide credit affect the relationship between credit expansions and real activity. A key advantage of jointly modeling the...

We study the impact of financing constraints on corporate risk management. Using data on credit scores matched with unique information on firm level commercial insurance purchases, we find that financing constraints lead to higher insurance spending. We adopt a regression discontinuity design...

With a sample of twelve US bond indices spanning different maturities, credit ratings and industry sectors, we investigate the impact of new bank capital regulation for trading portfolios introduced by Basel III. Specifically, we estimate the new capital requirements for (a) liquidity risk and...

The article addresses the issue of stress testing based on the probability of bankruptcy and a rating migration matrix. The analysis is conducted on a sample of listed companies in Poland in the years 1998-2016, and the forecasts are made for the years 2016-2018. Particular attention is paid to...

We examine the mechanism through which a financial crisis affects the default risk of real economy firms. We find that firms with strong dependence on bank financing suffer from higher increases in default risk than firms with no such dependence. Conversely, firms that rely solely on financing...

This article provides a generalized two-firm model of default correlation, based on the structural approach that incorporates interest rate risk. In most structural models default is driven by the firms' asset dynamics. In this article, a two-firm model of default is instead driven by the...

Intuition suggests that firms with higher cash holdings should be 'safer' and have lower credit spreads. Yet empirically, the correlation between cash and spreads is robustly positive. This puzzling finding can be explained by the precautionary motive for saving cash, which in our model causes...

On 3 December EY hosted a SUERF conference on banking reform with Sir Howard Davies, the Chairman of RBS, and Dame Colette Bowe, the Chairman of the Banking Standards Board, as the two keynote speakers. Professor David Miles (Imperial College) gave the SUERF 2015 Annual Lecture on Capital and...