While the empirical literature has often documented a “default anomaly”, i.e. a negative relation between default risk and stock returns, standard theory suggests that default risk should be priced in the cross-section. In this paper, we provide an explanation for this apparent puzzle using...

It is a common place that during financial crises, like the one started in 2007, authorities provide substantial financial support to some problem banks, whilst at the same time let several others to go bankrupt. Is this happening because some particular banks are considered important and big...

In the European Union, small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) represent 99% of all businesses and contribute to more than half of the total value-added. In this paper, we develop distress prediction models for SMEs using a dataset from eight European countries over the period 2000-2009. We...

We examine the existence of stock market contagion effects among three groups of countries: the Euro-periphery countries (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain), the Euro-core countries (Germany, France, the Netherlands, Finland, Belgium), and the major European Union - but not euro-countries...

We examine the transmission of extreme stock market returns among three groups of countries: the Euro-periphery countries (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain), the Euro-core countries (Germany, France, the Netherlands, Finland, Belgium), and the major European Union -but not euro- countries...