This paper aims to analyse Italian MFIs social performance according to the core set of common indicators and framework developed by the Social Performance Task Force using data collected by Fondazione Giordano Dell’Amore and Fondazione Risorsa Donna in 2008 for the European Microfinance...

Social banks are financial intermediaries paying attention to non-economic (i.e. social, ethical, and environmental) criteria. This paper investigates the behavior of social banks in the European credit market. We use a unique hand-collected dataset on 389 business loans granted by a French...

When a financial crisis breaks out, speculators typically get the blame whereas fundamentalists are presented as the safeguard against excessive volatility. This paper proposes an asset pricing model where two types of rational traders coexist: short-term speculators and long-term...

Art is often used as an investment vehicle. Given the importance of market efficiency in finance, we use a large auction-based index to test whether the art market is weakly efficient. Evidence reveals that returns on artworks exhibit high positive auto-correlation. We attribute this result to...

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, market efficiency is being heavily criticized. However, the volatility-based criticisms rely on false grounds as efficiency and speculative bubbles are compatible. Indeed, the efficient market model is about rationality and information, not about...

L'hypothèse d'efficience des marchés n'a pas toujours été (et n'est toujours pas) admise facilement par les praticiens de la finance dont la pertinence du conseil en placements se trouve menacée au profit de stratégies indicielles passives. La littérature académique s'est donc attelée...

Nous avons étudié quelles annonces économiques font significativement réagir le marché des obligations privées aux Etats-Unis. Nous avons mesuré l’impact sur 1 jour d’une trentaine d’annonces macroéconomiques sur les spreads de crédit, en affinant notre analyse grâce à une...

We analyze in this paper how various forms of State intervention can impact the microcredit market in developed countries. Using a simple model where entrepreneurs borrow without collateral, we study the effect of different policies on microfinance institutions' lending behavior. We first...

Starting from the structural model developed by Merton (1974) and the derived notion of distance-to-default, we study the determinants of credit default swap (CDS) spreads for a sample of European banks over a period from January 2006 to December 2011. In particular, we test variables that are...

This paper presents a model of a multinational firm’s optimal debt policy that incorporates international taxation factors. The model yields the prediction that a multinational firm’s indebtedness in a country depends on a weighted average of national tax rates and differences between...