Publications

May 2009
Article

Asymmetric Information Effects on Loan Spreads

By: Victoria Ivashina

The paper estimates the cost arising from information asymmetry between the lead bank and members of the lending syndicate. In a lending syndicate, the lead bank retains only a fraction of the loan but acts as the intermediary between the borrower and the syndicate... View Details

Keywords: Cost; Banks and Banking; Financing and Loans; Interest Rates; Capital; Investment Portfolio; Credit; Diversification; Risk and Uncertainty

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07 Feb 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Which Does More to Determine the Quality of Corporate Governance in Emerging Economies, Firms or Countries?

Keywords: by Andrea Hugill & Jordan Siegel

23 Jul 2024
Research & Ideas

Forgiving Medical Debt Won't Make Everyone Happier

patients finds the reality is much more complicated when it comes to languishing hospital bills. Canceling overdue medical debt on average does little or nothing to improve credit access, existing bill payment rates, or even mental... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Health

17 Jun 2008
First Look

First Look: June 17, 2008

loans to small firms and those with more "soft information"—particularly in states with weak legal enforcement of financial contracts. However, decentralized banks are also more responsive to the competitive environment when setting loan terms. They are more... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

2016
Working Paper

The Stock Market and Bank Risk-Taking

By: David S. Scharfstein and Antonio Falato

We argue that stock market pressure to generate earnings encourages banks to increase risk. We measure risk using confidential supervisory ratings as well as financial information released in regulatory filings. We document that there is an increase in the risk-taking... View Details

Keywords: Stock Market; Financial Markets; Business Earnings; Banks and Banking; Risk and Uncertainty

20 Jan 2009
Research & Ideas

Risky Business with Structured Finance

In the wake of the financial crisis, many once-esoteric investment terms have become a familiar part of our vocabulary. The role of structured finance securities such as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), for example, and the part played by View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Banking; Financial Services

01 Oct 2024
Research & Ideas

How Politics Drives Business Decisions in a Polarized Nation

prevalent.” 2. Politics affects analyst ratings Another study examined the work of corporate credit analysts working at Fitch, Moody’s, and Standard and Poor’s, who cover approximately 2,000 US firms.... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald

October 2021
Article

Can European Electric Utilities Manage Asset Impairments Arising from Net Zero Targets?

By: Conor Hickey, John O'Brien, Ben Caldecott, Celine McInerney and Brian O' Gallachoir

This paper develops a framework to assess the ability of electric utilities to sustain the forced impairment of carbon emitting power plants and applies it to the European market. We present a new method to measure asset impairment, for both the company and the... View Details

Keywords: Carbon Emissions; Environmental Regulation; Transition; Utilities Industry; Europe

11 Oct 2024
Research & Ideas

How AI Could Ease the Refugee Crisis and Bring New Talent to Businesses

The world’s refugee population has exploded over the last decade, straining the resources of international resettlement agencies as staff struggle to keep up with manually matching millions of refugees and asylum seekers to host... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand; Technology; Information Technology

09 Sep 2008
First Look

First Look: September 9, 2008

independent social rating agency and avoids selection issues by taking advantage of a natural experiment that arose when the agency expanded the scope of its ratings. We find... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

February 2025
Article

Improving Customer Compatibility with Tradeoff Transparency

By: Ryan W. Buell and MoonSoo Choi

Through a large-scale field experiment with 393,036 customers considering opening a credit card account with a nationwide retail bank, we investigate how providing transparency into an offering’s tradeoffs affects subsequent rates of customer acquisition and long-run... View Details

Keywords: Transparency; Customer Selection; Customer Compatibility; Retention; Service Operations; Service Delivery; Marketing Strategy; Marketing Communications; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Satisfaction; Banking Industry; Australia

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April 2019
Article

Shooting the Messenger

By: Leslie John, Hayley Blunden and Heidi Liu

Eleven experiments provide evidence that people have a tendency to “shoot the messenger,” deeming innocent bearers of bad news unlikeable. In a preregistered lab experiment, participants rated messengers who delivered bad news from a random drawing as relatively... View Details

Keywords: Judgment; Communication; Sense-making; Attribution; Disclosure; Interpersonal Communication; Perception; Judgments; Motivation and Incentives

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Forthcoming
Article

The Stock Market and Bank Risk-Taking

By: David S. Scharfstein and Antonio Falato

We argue that stock market pressure to generate earnings encourages banks to increase risk. We measure risk using confidential supervisory ratings as well as financial information released in regulatory filings. We document that there is an increase in the risk-taking... View Details

Keywords: Stock Market; Financial Markets; Business Earnings; Banks and Banking; Risk and Uncertainty

September 2012 (Revised July 2013)
Case

Can the Eurozone Survive?

By: Dante Roscini and Jonathan Schlefer

The sovereign debt crisis that took Greece by storm in 2010 began to spread to other European markets. Within a few months Ireland and Portugal had also lost access to the sovereign debt markets and had to rely on supranational loans for their financing. The risk of... View Details

Keywords: Sovereign Debt Crisis; Currency Areas; Financial Crisis; Borrowing and Debt; Currency Exchange Rate; International Relations; Banking Industry; European Union; Germany; France; Italy; Spain; Greece; Portugal

Educators

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2021
Working Paper

Time Dependency, Data Flow, and Competitive Advantage

By: Ehsan Valavi, Joel Hestness, Marco Iansiti, Newsha Ardalani, Feng Zhu and Karim R. Lakhani

Data is fundamental to machine learning-based products and services and is considered strategic due to its externalities for businesses, governments, non-profits, and more generally for society. It is renowned that the value of organizations (businesses, government... View Details

Keywords: Economics Of AI; Value Of Data; Perishability; Time Dependency; Flow Of Data; Data Strategy; Analytics and Data Science; Value; Strategy; Competitive Advantage

October 2020
Case

HOPE and Transformational Lending: Netflix Invests in Black Led Banks

By: John D. Macomber and Janice Broome Brooks

Following the killing of George Floyd on Memorial Day in 2020, the large US corporation Netflix elected to make a "transformational deposit" of $10 million into Hope Credit Union (HCU), a small Black led community development finance institution (CDFI) based in... View Details

Keywords: Banking; Rural Entrepreneurship; Economic Development; Black Entrepreneurs; Economic Growth; Credit; Banks and Banking; Entrepreneurship; Rural Scope; Development Economics; Race; Investment; Decision Making; Banking Industry

Educators

21 Oct 2014
First Look

First Look: October 21

cross-sectional empirical evidence is most persuasive in favor of agency considerations. Studies centered on the May 2003 dividend tax cut confirm that differences in the taxation of dividends and capital gains have only a second-order... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

19 May 2003
Lessons from the Classroom

Business Plan Winner Targets India Dropouts

any initiative to empower the poor and the equally critical importance of available credit to allow poorer families to invest in their future. Despite the plethora of education-related activities and the rapidly growing success stories in... View Details

Keywords: by Carla Tishler; Financial Services

July 2020
Case

Mortgage Backed Securities and the Covid-19 Pandemic

By: Emil N. Siriwardane, Luis M. Viceira and Dean Xu

In April 2020, global financial markets were still reeling as the COVID-19 pandemic spread rapidly across the world. Global equity markets had initially fallen by 30% in response to the pandemic, and high-yield credit markets had dropped by nearly 20%. In contrast,... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Mortgage-backed Securities; Health Pandemics; Financial Markets; Assets; Resource Allocation; Financial Instruments; Decision Making