Using a conviction-based measure, we find that local (state-level) public corruption exerts a negative effect on the lending activity of US banks. Our baseline estimations show that the difference in public corruption between, e.g., Alabama, where corruption is high, and Minnesota, where...

This paper examines the impact of economic freedom on the cost of bank loans using a sample of 30,644 bank-loan observations in 50 US states over the period 1991–2018. We find that greater economic freedom has been consistently linked to lower loan spreads. Digging deeper into the components...

We investigate how the cultural heritage of the CEOs of banks acting as lead lenders in the US syndicated loan market shapes the relationship between public corruption and the cost of bank loans. We find strong evidence that banks led by CEOs originating from higher uncertainty avoidance...

We examine the effect of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on the financial reporting quality of US firms over 1999-2015. Using accruals-based earnings management as a proxy for financial reporting quality and the index of Baker et al. (2016) as an EPU measure we show that they exhibit a...

We show that tax enforcement benefits US firms that borrow from banks. Using data on syndicated loans over the 1993-2017 period, we find that higher IRS audit probabilities exert a negative and significant effect on the cost of loans. The baseline estimates show that a one standard deviation...

We examine the effect of governance on analysts' earnings forecasts. We contribute in the literature by opting for indicators of country governability, such as the quality of government regulations, rule of law and government effectiveness. By employing a comprehensive data set for over 912 US...

The impact of strong emotions or mood on decision making and risk taking is well recognized in behavioral economics and finance. Yet, and in spite of the immense interest, no study, so far, has provided any comprehensive evidence on the impact of weather conditions. This paper provides the...