This paper studies firms' motives to hold non-cash financial assets. Non-financial firms could hold non-cash financial assets to hedge against (future) financing constraints or for speculative reasons. We document the importance of non-cash financial assets for Chinese firms and uncover that...

This paper examines the drivers of households’ sustainable investments. We documentthe presence of two types of sustainable investors: those that invest in sustainable assetsfor social reasons (social ) and those for financial reasons (financial). Both groupsare equally important but have...

Should regulators mandate priority rules in trading? While regulators often require price priority, they do not mandate secondary priority rules. We compare two well-established priority rules (i.e., price-broker-time priority (PBT) and price-time priority (PT)) in a market with a price grid....

The pass-through from the money market rate to several bank lending rates and the government bond rate is investigated for 12 European countries over the period 1980-2000, by applying a SVAR based on the Cholesky decomposition. Simulations of a one percent point rise in the money market rate,...

Using a novel way to identify relationship and transaction banks, we study how banks’ lending techniques affect funding to SMEs over the business cycle. For 21 countries we link the lending techniques that banks use in the direct vicinity of firms to these firms’ credit constraints at two...

Using a novel way to identify relationship and transaction banks, we study how banks’ lending techniques affect funding to SMEs over the business cycle. For 21 countries we link the lending techniques that banks use in the direct vicinity of firms to these firms’ credit constraints at two...

Earlier studies have documented that foreign banks charge lower lending rates and interest spreads than domestic banks. We hypothesize that this may stem from the superior efficiency of foreign entrants that they decide to pass onto borrowers (“performance hypothesis”), but could also...

Using a novel way to identify relationship and transaction banks, we study how banks’ lending techniques affect funding to SMEs over the business cycle. For 21 countries we link the lending techniques that banks use in the direct vicinity of firms to these firms’ credit constraints at two...

Banks have been heavily involved in securitization. We study whether the involvedness of a firm’s main bank into different types of securitization activity -- asset backed securities (ABS) and covered bonds -- influences credit supply before and during the 2007-8 financial crisis. Both types...

The recent financial crisis has reopened the debate on the impact of informal and formal finance on firm growth in developing countries. Using unique survey data, we find that informal finance is associated with higher sales growth for small firms and lower sales growth for large firms. We...