In most countries, equity is a cheap source of funding for a country's largest financial institutions. On average, the stocks of the top 10% financial companies in a country account for over a quarter of total market capitalization, but these stocks earn returns that are significantly lower than...

"We use bank stock returns to develop an ex-ante measure of the distortion created by the implicit collective guarantee extended to large U.S. financial institutions. The average return on a stock portfolio that goes long in the largest U.S. commercial banks and short in the smallest banks is...

U.S. banks have increasingly diversified into activities traditionally considered as non-core for the banking sector. This paper investigates whether diversification influences banks' investment (credit) policy and profitability. Diversified banks appear to benefit from “coinsurance,” supply...

The largest commercial bank stocks, ranked by the total size of the balance sheet, have significantly lower risk-adjusted returns than small- and medium-sized bank stocks, even though large banks are significantly more levered. We uncover a size factor in the component of bank returns that is...

The largest commercial bank stocks, ranked by total size of the balance sheet, have significantly lower risk-adjusted returns than small- and medium-sized bank stocks, even though large banks are significantly more levered. We uncover a size factor in the component of bank returns that is...

Amit Goyal wrote a comment on our paper (Gandhi and Lustig (2014)) which misrepresents our study of the size effects in bank stock returns. This note shows that the size anomalies in bank stock returns documented by Gandhi and Lustig are robust to experimental design and are mostly driven by the...

This note presents the details regarding the definition of commercial banks in Gandhi and Lustig (2014). We also explore some alternative methods for identifying commercial banks in CRSP. Finally, we check if alternative definitions of commercial banks in CRSP affect the quantitative results in...

The largest commercial bank stocks, ranked by total size of the balance sheet, have significantly lower risk-adjusted returns than small- and medium-sized bank stocks, even though large banks are significantly more levered. We uncover a size factor in the component of bank returns that is...

This paper exploits a natural experiment from the late 1800s in which many U.S. firms had inadvertently issued both taxable and tax-exempt bonds. Investors paid income tax on taxable bonds, but firms covered income tax on investors' behalf on tax-exempt bonds. Using a unique data-set of these...