We estimate firms' cash flow sensitivity of cash to empirically test how the financial system's structure and activity level influence their financial constraints. For this purpose we merge Almeida, Campello and Weisbach (2004), a pathbreaking new design for evaluating a firm's financial...

The global economy is in the midst of an unprecedented slump caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. To assess the likely evolution of nonfinancial corporate performance going forward, this paper investigates empirically the impact of past pandemics using firm-level data on more than 537,000 companies...

This paper exploits a unique data set on bank-firm relationships based on syndicated loan deals to examine the effect of banks' credit risk and capital on firms' risk and performance. Our data set is a multilevel cross-section, which essentially allows controlling for all bank and firm...

This paper focuses on global financial centres, which played a key role in the financial crisis of 2008. The trade in derivatives, despite being limited in large part to Europe and the USA, significantly influenced the global economy and the competitiveness of financial centres. This study...

The business corporation is one of the greatest organizational inventions. But it creates risks for both shareholders and third parties. To mitigate these risks, legislators, judges, and corporate lawyers have tried to learn from experiences in other jurisdictions and adapt their regulatory...

After the financial crisis, there has been considerable debate about the role of corporations in society. It has become broadly accepted that corporations - particularly the world's largest publicly traded corporations – need to be governed with respect for the society and the environment....

Analyzing innovative firms' patent and financial data in 23 countries over 1990-2012, we find that more innovative firms hoard more cash for technology competition and opportunities. Our instrumental variable regression analysis based on the patent rights index supports a causal interpretation...

We study the link between information barriers in global markets and the organizational form of asset management. Fund families outsource funds in which they are at an informational disadvantage to generate performance. Using a structural model of self-selection, we endogenize the outsourcing...

Weak creditor rights introduce contracting frictions and magnify conflicts of interest between borrowers and creditors. We examine the effects of creditor rights on the sensitivity of bank lending terms to aggregate relative to firm-specific information. We formulate two competing hypotheses. On...

During normal times, strengthening the financial stability of banks is associated with contradictory effects on returns. In this paper, we establish that liquidity and capital ratios had a positive impact on bank returns during the first three years following the global financial crisis. Our...