The paper measures the growth in open-market stock repurchases and the manner in which stock repurchases and dividends are used in U.S. corporations. We find that aggregate repurchases have increased dramatically over this period: the number and value of repurchase program announcements has...

In contrast to Dutch auction repurchases and tender offers, the actual number of shares a firm will ultimately acquire in an open-market repurchase program is uncertain. This uncertainty arises because open-market share repurchase programs provide the firm with the option to repurchase shares,...

Most of the literature addressing multiple banking assumes equal financing shares. However, unequal, concentrated or asymmetric bank borrowing is widespread. This paper investigates the determinants of creditor concentration for German firms using a comprehensive bank-firm level dataset for the...

The globalization of banking in the United States is influencing the monetary transmission mechanism both domestically and in foreign markets. Using quarterly information from all U.S. banks filing call reports between 1980 and 2005, we find evidence for the lending channel for monetary policy...

International financial linkages, particularly through global bank flows, generate important questions about the consequences for economic and financial stability, including the ability of countries to conduct autonomous monetary policy. I address the monetary autonomy issue in the context of...

Banks play a special role as providers of informative signals about the quality and value of their borrowers. Such signals, however, may have a quality of their own as the banks’ selection and monitoring abilities may differ. Using an event study methodology, we study the importance of the...

This paper provides the first empirical evidence that bank regulation is associated with cross-border spillover effects through the lending activities of large multinational banks. We analyze business lending by 155 banks to 9613 firms in 1976 different localities across 16 countries. We find...

In this paper, we investigate the economy-wide effects of the collateral channel by exploiting: (i) a legal reform in Sweden in 2004 that reduced collateral values, and (ii) a dataset that covers all incorporated firms in Sweden over the period 2000-2006. We find that the loss in collateral...

We analyze the impact of balance-sheet strength on credit availability. Bank balance sheets are weak in crisis times, but so are those of firms, and credit demand is then also weak. For identification, we exploit an administrative dataset of loan applications matched with bank and firm variables...

We study the effects of the diversification of funding sources on the financing conditions for firms. We exploit a regulatory reform which took place in Italy in 2012, i.e., the introduction of "minibonds", which opened a new market-based funding opportunity for unlisted firms. Using the Italian...