We examine the importance of corporate assets in supporting debt. Prior studies typically see only secured debt as asset backed, while the rest is deemed cash flow based. This implies only a small fraction of US debt is asset backed. Yet because corporations often resist offering security...

Theory suggests that in the face of fire sale externalities, banks have incentives to overinvest in order to issue excessive money-like deposit liabilities. The existence of a private market for insurance such as contingent capital can eliminate the overinvestment incentives, leading to...

The authors employ a novel dataset on almost 30,000 trade credit contracts to describe the broad characteristics of the parties that contract together; the key contractual terms, such as the discount for early payment; and the days by when payment is due. Whereas prior work has typically used...

This paper provides new evidence on the unique role of trade credit and contracting terms as a way for both sellers and buyers to mange business risk. The authors use a novel and unique dataset on almost 30,000 supplier contracts for 56 large buyers and more than 24,000 suppliers in Europe and...

Using a comprehensive database of firms in Western and Eastern Europe, the authors study how the business environment in a country drives the creation of new firms. They focus on regulations governing entry, although they also examine the effects of a developed financial sector, a well-trained...