To extend and monitor loans, banks collect detailed and proprietary information about the financial prospects of their customers, many of whom are local businesses and households. Therefore, banks’ loan portfolios contain potentially useful information about local economic conditions. We...

We examine how the patterns of inter-industry trade flows impact the transfer of information and economic shocks. We provide evidence that the intensity of transfers depends on industries' positions within the economy. In particular, some industries occupy central positions in the flow of trade,...

We examine the role of the coupon choice in bond contracts as a signaling mechanism in the presence of information asymmetry between borrowers and lenders about the credit quality of the borrower. Prior literature focuses on the use of maturity as a signaling mechanism. We conjecture that the...

Estimating expected credit losses on banks' portfolios has long been difficult. The issue has become of increasing interest to academics and regulators, as the FASB and IASB consider new regulations for impairment of loans. This study develops a measure of the one-year-ahead expected rate of...

This study develops a timely and unbiased measure of expected credit losses. The expected rate of credit losses (ExpectedRCL) is a linear combination of various non-discretionary credit risk-related measures disclosed by banks. ExpectedRCL performs substantially better than net charge-offs,...