The rise of bond financing in EuropeUsing large panel data of public and private firms, this paper dissects the growth of bond financing in the Euro Area through the lens of the cross-section of issuers. In recent years, the composition of bond issuers has shifted, with the entry of many smaller...

What is the cross-sectional relationship between financial leverage and expected equity returns? How is the empirical relationship associated with firm's financial decisions? This paper investigates the potential explanations for the flatness relation between financial leverage and expected...

We provide novel evidence that investor demand for leverage is both a causal and significant driver of equity closed-end fund (CEF) discounts. More levered funds trade at smaller discounts, despite having worse performance. The relation is not consistent with any rational story considered. We...

This paper is concerned with the valuation and analysis of risky debt instruments with arbitrary interest and principal payments subject to default risk. We use a discrete risk-neutral present value model with expected payments for risk-neutral investors and risk-free spot rates for the...

We provide robust empirical evidence that uncovers the reason for the observed closer relationship between the bond market versus the equity market and the macroeconomy. Our results indicate that the tight bond market-macroeconomy link is not due to differences in the investor base, but instead...

The incremental risk charge (IRC) is a new regulatory requirement from the Basel Committee in response to the recent financial crisis. Notably few models for IRC have been developed in the literature. This paper proposes a methodology consisting of two Monte Carlo simulations. The first Monte...

This paper examines to what extent stock market anomalies are driven by firm fundamentals in an investment-based asset pricing framework. Using Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC), we estimate a two-capital q-model to match firm-level stock returns, instead of matching portfolio-level...

A deep-ingrained doctrine in asset pricing says that if an empirical characteristic-return relation is consistent with investor “rationality,” the relation must be “explained” by a risk (factor) model. The investment approach questions the doctrine. Factors formed on characteristics are...

A deep-ingrained doctrine in asset pricing says that if an empirical characteristic-return relation is consistent with investor “rationality,” the relation must be “explained” by a risk (factor) model. The investment approach questions the doctrine. Factors formed on characteristics are...

Starting from the Merton framework for firm defaults, we provide the analytics and robustness of the relationship between default correlations. We show that loans with higher default probabilities will not only have higher variances but also higher correlations between loans. As a consequence,...