We show that at-the-money implied volatility of options on futures of 5-year Treasury notes (Treasury ‘yield implied volatility') predicts both the growth rate and volatility of gross domestic product, as well as of other macroeconomic variables, like industrial production, consumption, and...

Current measures of bank distress find marginal value in predictive variables beyond a capital adequacy ratio and tend to miss extreme events impacting the entire sector. Our paper advocates a new proxy for bank distress: sentiment measures from banks' annual reports. After controlling for...

The organization structure of global banks affects how they respond to liquidity shocks and matters for international shock transmission. Liquidity shocks to global banks induces a fire sales of securities by their international branches that rely on parent banks for funding, but not by their...

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...

In the U.S., over 1873-2014, an increase in bank credit is associated with a lower risk of a financial crisis in the near future. Bank credit expansion predicts lower excess returns and volatility for the aggregate stock market, and this predictive relation varies in the cross-section and is...

Higher bank credit growth implies that excess returns of bank stocks over the next one year are lower by nearly 3%. Credit growth tracks bank stock returns over the business cycle and explains nearly 14% of the variation in bank stock returns over a 1-year horizon. I argue that the predictive...

Higher bank credit growth implies that excess returns of bank stocks over the next one year are lower by nearly 3%. Credit growth tracks bank stock returns over the business cycle and explains nearly 14% of the variation in bank stock returns over a 1-year horizon. I argue that the predictive...