Using a sample of U.S. mergers and acquisitions, this study evaluates how banking relationships influence acquirers’ choice of financial advisors. Specifically, it examines: i) acquirers’ previous relationships with advisors in various financial activities: M&A advisories, equity issuings...

This paper examines the determinants of the choice of financial advisors and their impact on the announcement effects of US acquirers in cross-border M&As. Two hypotheses are tested: one pertains to the acquiring firms’ home preference in selecting financial advisors, and the other relates to...

The paper constructs a search-theoretic model of credit markets with a bilateral trading mechanism that enables the manageable introduction of asymmetric information. Borrowers´ success probabilities are unobservable to financiers, but the degree of risk in observable projects can be used as a...

Motivated by the U.S. events of the 2000s, we address whether a too low for too long interest rate policy may generate a boom-bust cycle. We simulate anticipated and unanticipated monetary policies in state-of-the-art DSGE models and in a model with bond financing via a shadow banking system, in...

European nations substitute between employment protection regulations and labor market expenditures (e.g., unemployment insurance benefits) for providing worker insurance. Employment regulations more directly tax firms making frequent labor adjustments than other labor market insurance...

We study whether and to what extent financial exchange innovations are in practice patentable in Europe. We find that exchange-related applications initially increased significantly after the State Street decision but subsequently decreased. The clear majority (65%) of applications come from the...

We study the effects of investor protection on the availability of external finance, entrepreneurship, and creation of new firms in an equilibrium search model of private capital markets. In addition to search frictions, we examine contract frictions, specifically interim and ex post moral...

This paper studies relationship lending in a framework where the cost of switching banks measures the degree of banking competition. The relationship lender’s (insider bank’s) informational advantage creates a lock-in effect, which is at its height when the switching cost is infinitesimal....

This paper studies how comparing can be used to provide information in financial markets in the presence of a hidden characteristics problem. Although an investor cannot precisely estimate the future returns of an entrepreneur’s projects, the investor can mitigate the asymmetric information...

We examine how political connections impact the process of going public. Specifically, we test how political connections impact the pricing of newly offered shares, the magnitude of underpricing, and the fixed cost of going public. Based on experiences of the new public firms in the Chinese...