I study a model of market-liquidity provision by levered intermediaries that, besides operating trading desks, run deposit-taking franchises. Levered intermediaries’ heightened incentive to absorb risk helps to counteract liquidity-provision frictions that, in an unlevered economy, would lead...

We study whether the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002 made firms less opaque. For identification, we use a difference-in-differences estimation approach and compare EU firms that are cross-listed in the US—and therefore subject to SOX—with comparable EU firms that are not cross-listed. We...

We use a classic Merton credit risk framework to argue that Islamic Banking Institutions (IBIs) face less incentive to take on risks than Conventional Banking Institutions (CBI). IBIs have less incentive for risk shifting both in and outside of distress situations. We test and confirm this...

In this paper we propose the use of <I>preferred outcome</I> distributions as a new method to elicit individuals' value and probability weighting functions in decisions under risk. Extant approaches for the elicitation of these two key ingredients of individuals' risk attitude typically rely on a long,...</i>

Strategic investors, such as corporate venture capitalists, engage in the financing of start-up firms to complement their core businesses and to facilitate the internalization of externalities. We argue that while strategic objectives make it more worthwhile for an investor to elicit high...

Can a wealth shift to emerging countries explain instability in developed countries? Investors exposed to political risk seek safety in countries with better property right protection. This induces private intermediaries to offer safety via inexpensive demandable debt, and increase lending into...

The behavioural approach to decision making under uncertainty combines insights from psychology and sociology into economic decision making. It steps away from the normative homo economicus and introduces a positive approach to human decision making under uncertainty. We provide an overview of...

We analyze earnings forecasts retrieved from the I/B/E/S database concerning 596 firms for the sample 1995 to 2011, with a specific focus on whether these earnings forecasts can be predicted from available data. Our main result is that earnings forecasts can be predicted quite accurately using...

An analysis of about 300000 earnings forecasts, created by 18000 individual forecasters for earnings of over 300 S&P listed firms, shows that these forecasts are predictable to a large extent using a statistical model that includes publicly available information. When we focus on the...

We study the effects of a bank’s engagement in trading. Traditional banking is relationship-based: not scalable, long-term oriented, with high implicit capital, and low risk (thanks to the law of large numbers). Trading is transactions-based: scalable, short-term, capital constrained, and with...