We adapt structural models of default risk to take into account the special nature of bank assets. The usual assumption of log-normally distributed asset values is not appropriate for banks. Typical bank assets are risky debt claims, which implies that they embed a short put option on the...

We consider the effect of hedging with foreign currency derivatives on Brazilian firms in the period 1997 through 2004, a period that includes the Brazilian currency crisis of 1999. We find that, derivative users have valuations that are higher than non-user firms. Hedging with currency...

The Federal Reserve Bank and the U.S. Treasury bought several individual corporate bonds in response to COVID-19. We show that the program purchased bonds that became highly information-sensitive due to the crisis, bonds used as collateral in the repo market by primary bond dealers, and bonds...

Financial institutions received billions of dollars from the U.S. Treasury in the form of preferred equity under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in 2008. Investments were made during a bad state, but the repayments came in a relatively good time. Comparing TARP's realized returns to...

Despite plenty of anecdotal evidence of hidden losses in banks, there is no systematic study analyzing the economic drivers of this behavior: we simply do not get to observe what banks are hiding unless they are caught. Using a regulatory change in India that forced all commercial banks to...

We adapt structural models of default risk to take into account the special nature of bank assets. The usual assumption of log-normally distributed asset values is not appropriate for banks. Typical bank assets are risky debt claims, which implies that they embed a short put option on the...

We adapt structural models of default risk to take into account the special nature of bank assets. The usual assumption of log-normally distributed asset values is not appropriate for banks. Typical bank assets are risky debt claims, which implies that they embed a short put option on the...