Taking advantage of a rich database of more than 1 million companies in Spain, France and the U.K., we propose and test a hypothesis to explain why Spain has one of the world’s lowest business bankruptcy rates, even during the current economic crisis and after controlling for market exit...

The paper warns about the potential efficiency losses associated with low business bankruptcy rates (number of firms filing for bankruptcy as a proportion of the total stock of firms) and shows that welfare could be improved by increasing the protection of creditors in the bankruptcy system....

Small businesses, the majority of Spanish fi rms, rarely fi le for formal bankruptcy, and this has been the case even during the current economic crisis. This suggests that bankruptcy law has a limited role to play in the distress of small fi rms. We propose an explanation based on two premises:...

The aim of this paper is to assess the level of competition prevailing in the Spanish banking system. The current analysis employs a widely used non-structural methodology put forward by Panzar and Rosse (1987) —the so-called H-statistic— and draws upon a comprehensive panel dataset of...

This paper contains estimates of physical and intangible (information technology, advertising and training) capital stock, together with capital, labor and externally provided input services, of Spanish commercial and saving banks in the period 1983 to 2003. Capital stocks are valued at...

Spanish banks had to set aside a countercyclical loan loss provision during the period 2000 2004. The amount of such provision as well as the allowance accumulated had to be disclosed by banks. The former creates a natural experiment to test whether banks smooth earnings to mislead investors and...

This article presents a critical analysis of the principles behind the scope and forms of cooperation between EU Member States and third-country resolution authorities in the context of the 2014 Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive. The article also explores the future responsibilities of the...

This article studies how the managers of a regulated firm can use debt and equity contracts to constrain the regulator’s policy through the contingent transfer of control to external investors with high relative liquidation value. External finance increases regulated income and facilitates...

The impact of entry upon market performance depends not only on the number of entries and their size, but also on how long do the firms last. Consequently, there are an increasing number of papers, most of them focused on the United States and restricted to the manufacturing sector, aimed at...

This paper applies the methodology developed by Forte and Peña (2006) to extract the implied default point in the premium on credit default swaps (CDS). As well as considering a more extensive international sample of corporations (96 US, European and Japanese companies) and a longer time...