We use a proprietary dataset from a large Swiss retail bank to examine the impact of financial advice on individual investors’ stock trading performance and their behavioral biases. Our data allows us to classify each individual trade as either advised or independent and to compare them in a...

We present a new, regression-based methodology for decomposing the risk-adjusted performance of private investors, firms, and mutual funds. Our technique allows for the inclusion of multivariate and continuous subject characteristics in the analysis and it ensures that the statistical results...

Exploiting a unique feature of the Clayton Antitrust Act, we analyze how directors holding outside directorships at peer firms affect firm value and performance of financial firms. We find that directors serving simultaneously at horizontally-related firms have a negative impact on firm value...

The issue of optimum bank scope is central to many proposals for banking system reform. For example, a core component of the Dodd-Frank Act (2010) and regulatory proposals in the UK and the EU has been the concept of “ring-fencing” – i.e., restricting banks’ activities to their core...

We study financial reporting and corporate governance in 216 U.S. companies accused of price fixing by antitrust authorities. We document a range of strategies used by these firms when reporting financial results, including frequent earnings smoothing, segment reclassification, and restatements....

We investigate whether investor reactions to the announcement of a new outside director appointment significantly depend on the director’s experience in the appointing firm’s industry. We use a sample of 385 outside directors appointed to the board of S&P 500 companies from 2008 to 2010. Our...

We analyze the valuation effect of board industry experience and channels through which industry experience of outside directors affects firm value. Firms with more experienced outside directors are valued at a premium compared to firms with less experienced outside directors. Additional tests...

We study retail deposit withdrawals from European commercial banks which incurred investment losses in the wake of the U.S. subprime crisis. We document a strong propensity of households to withdraw deposits from distressed banks, especially when a bank receives a public bailout. However, the...

The search for a market design that ensures stable bank funding is at the top of regulators' policy agenda. This paper empirically shows that an important part of the European money market features this quality, namely the central counterparty (CCP)-based euro interbank repo market. Using a...

This study examines the exposure of microfinance institutions to liquidity, interest rate and foreign exchange (FX) risk. It builds on a manually collected set of data on FX positions and the maturity structure of assets and liabilities of the largest microfinance institutions worldwide. The...