This paper examines how efficiency dynamics of Islamic and conventional banks compare and how they are converging across different countries. We employ both parametric and non-parametric methods to analyse a panel of Islamic and conventional banks from 23 countries during the period 1999 to...

Small and micro enterprises are usually majority owned by entrepreneurs. Using a unique sample of loan applications from such firms, we study the role of owners' gender in the credit decision of banks and the post-credit decision firm outcomes. We find that, ceteris paribus, female entrepreneurs...

Corporate taxation can have re-distributive effects on income and wealth. We hypothesize and empirically establish such an effect working via bank credit. Using a unique sample of majority-owned firms that apply for credit, we show that after a decrease in corporate tax rates the relatively poor...

We show that financial risk-taking originates in preindustrial ancestral population diversity. We use data on immigrants residing in the United States and show that controlling for all known determinants of portfolio decisions, diversity positively affects stock market participation and asset...

We provide the first global estimates of profit shifting at the subsidiary-year level. Employing nonparametric estimation techniques within a mainstay model of profit shifting, we examine the subsidiary-year responses of earnings to the composite tax indicator faced by all subsidiaries of a...

We study whether management practices determine merger and acquisition (M&A) success. We model management as an unobserved (latent) variable in a standard microeconomic model of the firm and derive firm-year management estimates. We validate these estimates against benchmark survey data on...

In this paper we gauge the degree of interconnectedness and quantify the linkages between global and other systemically important institutions, and the global financial system. We document that the two groups and the financial system become more interconnected during the global financial crisis...

Governments around the world are tackling the COVID-19 pandemic with a mix of public health, fiscal, macroprudential, monetary, or market-based policies. We assess the impact of the pandemic in Europe on sovereign CDS spreads using an event study methodology. We find that a higher number of...

Bank bailouts are not the "one-shot" events commonly described in the literature. These bailouts are instead dynamic processes in which regulators "catch" financially distressed banks; "restrict" their activities over time; and "release" the banks from restrictions at sufficiently healthy capital...

We study the effect of armed conflict on loan officers and their actual lending decisions. Following mortar shelling of Indian border areas in the state of Jammu & Kashmir, we document that after repeated incidences of shelling the loan rates set by the loan officers exponentially increase....