Dividend payouts affect the relative value of claims within a firm. When firms have contingent claims on each other, as in the banking sector, dividend payouts can shift the relative value of stakeholders' claims across firms. Through this channel, one bank's capital policy affects the equity...

We study empirically the effect of focus (specialization) vs. diversification on the return and the risk of banks using data from 105 Italian banks over the period 1993-1999. Specifically, we analyze the tradeoffs between (loan portfolio) focus and diversification using a unique data set that is...

Emerging market firms frequently borrow in foreign currency (FX), but their assets are often denominated in domestic currency. This behavior leads to an FX mismatch on firms balance sheets, which can harm their net worth in the event of a depreciation. I use a large, unanticipated, and exogenous...

This complementary paper to Froot, Scharfstein, and Stein (1993) seeks to explore some of the corporate finance foundations of monetary economics. In particular, we investigate the impact of corporate risk management strategies on the monetary transmission mechanism. We employ a simple model of...

Quite an impressive amount of recent academic research focuses on the idea that financial factors may cause or reinforce real fluctuations. In these models, it is typically a monetary policy shock that serves to lower the value of an asset which is used to secure a firm's borrowing, thereby...

I explore the effect of the threat posed by low-cost competitors on debt structure in the airline industry. I use the route network expansion of low-cost airlines to identify routes where the probability of future entry increases dramatically. I find that when strategic routes are threatened,...

The 30-year U.S. swap spreads have been negative since September 2008. We offer a novel explanation for this persistent anomaly. Through an illustrative model, we show that underfunded pension plans optimally use swaps for duration hedging. Combined with dealer banks' balance sheet constraints,...

Prices of equity index put options contain information on the price of systematic downward jump risk. We use a structural jump-diffusion firm value model to assess the level of credit spreads that is generated by option-implied jump risk premia. In our compound option pricing model, an equity...

We formally compare two versions of the market Variance Risk Premium (VRP) measured in the equity and option markets. Both VRPs follow common patterns and respond similarly to changes in volatility and economic conditions. However, we reject the null hypothesis that they are identical and find...

Foreign exchange (FX) derivatives markets in the Korean won are comparatively thin and vulnerable to impaired functioning. During the crisis, Korea faced dislocations in its FX swap and cross-currency swap markets, so severe that covered interest parity (CIP) between the Korean won and the US...