This paper models the strategic interaction between a rating agency, a banking sector and a bank regulator who lacks information about bank asset risk. The regulator can either (1) make bank capital requirements contingent on credit ratings; or (2) set rating independent capital requirements....

This paper provides evidence for regulatory arbitrage within the class of asset-backed securities (ABS) based on individual asset holding data of German banks. I find that banks operating with tight regulatory constraints exploit the low risk-sensitivity of rating-contingent capital requirements...

How do banks respond to changes in capital requirements as a result of the stress tests? Does the disclosure of stress test results matter? To answer these questions, we study the impact of European stress tests on banks' lending, their corresponding risk-taking, the ensuing effect on their...

Using the introduction of high-speed rail (HSR) as an exogenous shock to costs of information acquisition, we show that reductions in information-acquisition costs lead to (i) a significant increase in information production, evidenced by a higher frequency of analysts visiting portfolio firms,...

Using the introduction of high-speed rail as exogenous shocks to costs of information acquisition, we show that reductions in information-acquisition costs lead to a significant increase in information production and improvement in output quality, evidenced by higher frequency of analysts...

The effective functioning of the municipal bond market is crucial for the provision of public services, as it is the largest capital market for state and municipal issuers. Prior research has documented tax, credit, liquidity, and segmentation effects in municipal bonds. Recent regulatory...

Systemically important banks are subject to at least two departures from the neutrality of debt versus equity financing: the tax deductibility of interest payments and implicit funding subsidies. This paper fills a gap in the literature by comparing their mechanism and interaction within a...

We identify frictions in the market for liquidity as well as bank-specific and market-wide factors that affect the prices that banks pay for liquidity, captured here by borrowing rates in repos with the central bank and benchmarked by the overnight index swap. We have price data at the...

We study the effects of the US Federal Reserve's large-scale asset purchase programs during 2008-2014 on bank liquidity creation. Banks create liquidity when they transform the liquid reserves resulted from quantitative easing into illiquid assets. As the composition of banks' loan portfolio...

The cost of bank funding on money markets is typically the sum of a risk-free rate and a spread that reflects rollover risk, i.e., the risk that banks cannot roll over their short-term market funding. This risk is a major concern for policymakers, who need to intervene to prevent the funding...