We use a unique data set to analyse how UK banks deal with small to medium size distressed firms both inside and outside bankruptcy. The approach to bankruptcy is contract-based, with lenders and borrowers relying on procedures written into the debt contract, and where the courts are largely...

Since the 2008 global financial crisis, and after decades of relative neglect, the importance of the financial system and its episodic crises as drivers of macroeconomic outcomes has attracted fresh scrutiny from academics, policy makers, and practitioners. Theoretical advances are following a...

In this paper we propose a new security, the Call Option Enhanced Reverse Convertible (COERC). The security is a form of contingent capital, i.e. a bond that converts into equity when the market value of equity relative to debt falls below a certain trigger. The conversion price is set...

The crisis of the advanced economies in 2008-09 has focused new attention on money and credit fluctuations, financial crises, and policy responses. We study the behavior of money, credit, and macroeconomic indicators over the long run based on a new historical dataset for 14 countries over the...

Since World War II, direct stock ownership by households has largely been replaced by indirect stock ownership by financial institutions. We argue that tax policy is the driving force. Using long time-series from eight countries, we show that the fraction of household ownership decreases with...

We examine the risk-return characteristics of a rolling portfolio investment strategy where more than six thousand Nasdaq initial public offering (IPO) stocks are bought and held for up to five years. The average long-run portfolio return is low, but IPO stocks appear as ‘longshots’, as...

This paper derives arbitrage trading strategies taking into account the fact that the actions of arbitrageurs impact prices. This avoids the difficulty of having to rely on exogenous position limits to prevent infinite arbitrage profits. When arbitrageurs are financially constrained their...

We find that active mutual funds perform better after trading more. This time-series relation between a fund’s turnover and its subsequent benchmarkadjusted return is especially strong for small, high-fee funds. These results are consistent with high-fee funds having greater skill to identify...

We survey the literature analysing the price formation and trading process, and the consequences of market organization for price discovery and welfare. We develop a united perspective on theoretical, empirical and experimental approaches. We discuss the evidence on transaction costs and the...

This paper tests for conflicts of interest in the rating process of European asset- and mortgage-backed securities based on a new aggregation method for a deal's different tranche ratings. Controlling for a large set of determinants of credit risk, we find that credit rating agencies provide...