We provide estimates of holdings of highly-rated securitization tranches of American bank holding companies ahead of the credit crisis and evaluate hypotheses that have been advanced to explain these holdings. Our broadest estimates include CDOs as well as holdings in off-balance-sheet conduits....

We construct a firm-level governance index that increases with minority shareholder protection. Compared to U.S. matching firms, only 12.68% of foreign firms have a higher index. The value of foreign firms falls as their index decreases relative to the index of matching U.S. firms. Our results...

We compare the governance of foreign firms to the governance of similar U.S. firms. Using an index of firm governance attributes, we find that, on average, foreign firms have worse governance than matching U.S. firms. Roughly 8% of foreign firms have better governance than comparable U.S. firms....

Bank mergers will increase or decrease loan spreads, depending on whether the increased market power outweighs gains in operating efficiency. Using a proprietary loan-level data set for U.S. commercial banks, I find that, on average, mergers reduce loan spreads, and that the reduction is greater...

Managers often claim that an important source of value in acquisitions is the acquiring firm's ability to finance investments for the target firm. This claim implies that targets are financially constrained prior to being acquired and that these constraints are eased following the acquisition....

We estimate holdings of highly-rated tranches of mortgage securitizations of American deposit-taking banks ahead of the credit crisis and evaluate hypotheses that have been advanced to explain these holdings. We find that holdings of highly-rated tranches were economically trivial for the...

Economic theory, as well as commonly-stated views of practitioners, suggests that market downturns can affect both the ability and manner in which firms raise external financing. Theory suggests that downturns should be associated with a shift toward less information-sensitive securities, as...

We examine whether institutional investors affect corporate governance by analyzing institutional holdings in companies from 23 countries in 2003-2008. We find that firm-level governance is positively associated with international institutional investment. Changes in institutional ownership over...

Banks and other financial institutions should allocate capital in proportion to the marginal default value of each line of business, which is the derivative of the value of the bank's default put with respect to a change in the scale of the business. Marginal default values give a unique...

Despite the fact that one-third of worldwide mergers involve firms from different countries, the vast majority of the academic literature on mergers studies domestic mergers. What little has been written about cross-border mergers has focused on public firms, usually from the United States. Yet,...