We investigate the relationship between borrower quality and the structure of the pool of banks. First, we develop a theoretical model where the size of the banking pool is a credible signal of firm quality. We argue that better borrowers seek to disclose their quality in a credible way through...

The Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union, adopted in March 2012 and entering into force in January 2013, was presented as a reinforcement of the Stability and Growth Pact. The present Brief argues that this new Treaty does not seem to offer a...

Reputation of financial institutions is crucial for their activity and performance. Participant banks often rely on lead bank’s reputation in making future syndicated loan participation and lending decisions. We apply ordered probit regression techniques to a sample of more than 4,600 loans to...

Social networks and reputation are believed to play important roles in mitigating informational frictions related to financial intermediation, in particular bank lending. We investigate the effect of the network and reputation of financial institutions on the certification value of bank loans...

We study the effect of bank loan and bond announcements on borrower’s stock price. We apply an event study methodology on a sample of companies from 17 European countries. We find that debt announcement generates a positive stock market reaction. However our main conclusion is that the...

The global crisis, which was the worst economic and financial downturn since the Great Depression, revealed the fundamental deficiencies in the global financial system and drastically changed the way we view the world and the global financial system. The crisis challenged long-standing views and...

We investigate bank loans’ specialness with a particular focus on the recent boom and bust cycle. We perform an empirical analysis using event study methodology on a sample of 253 large loan announcements for French borrowers between January 2000 and December 2009. We find a significant and...

In recent years, population ageing has attracted the attention of research and policy advisors in all European countries. Several policy actions have been directed toward ensuring optimal long-term care (LTC) for elderly people while maintaining fiscal rationality. LTC systems are very different...

Long-term care (LTC) in the new EU member states, which used to belong to the former socialist countries, is not yet a legally separated sector of social security. However, the ageing dynamics are more intensive in these states than in the old EU member states. This paper analyses the process of...