Researchers' attempts to identify the valuation of collateral has been hampered by data limitations. We overcome this challenge by comparing spreads on loans originated by the same bank, to the same firm, at the same origination date, but with different types of collateral. We find that securing...

This paper investigates if the bond market disciplines all banks equally, in the sense of demanding the same relative risk premium across banks of different risk over the business cycle. To test this hypothesis, the paper compares the difference between the credit spreads in the primary market...

This paper investigates whether the bond market disciplines all banks equally in the sense of demanding the same relative risk premium across banks of different risk over time. To test this hypothesis the paper compares the difference between the credit spreads in the primary market of bank and...

This paper presents a theory of firm access to the bond market in which information gathering agencies provide a valuable service but alter the relative cost of this funding source across firms of different creditworthiness and over the business cycle. The theory builds on two assumptions....

This paper presents a theory of firm access to the bond market in which information gathering agencies are valuable but alter the relative cost of bond financing across firms and over the business cycle. The theory builds on the assumption that information frictions prevent these agencies from...

The massive losses that banks incurred with the meltdown of the subprime mortgage market have raised concerns about their ability to continue lending to corporations. We investigate these concerns. We find that firms paid higher loan spreads during the subprime crisis.Importantly, the increase...

Over the years, U.S. banks have increasingly relied on the bond market to finance their business. This created the potential for a link between the bond market and the corporate sector whereby borrowers, including those that do not rely on bond funding, became exposed to the conditions in the...

The massive losses that banks have incurred with the meltdown of subprime mortgages have raised concerns with their ability to continue extending loans to corporations. In this paper, we attempt to ascertain these concerns by investigating if banks have changed their loan pricing policies in...

Theory suggests that banks' private information about borrowers lets them hold up borrowers for higher interest rates. Since hold-up power increases with borrower risk, banks with exploitable information should be able to raise their rates in recessions by more than is justified by borrower risk...

This paper investigates the equity investments and voting rights that American banks control through their trust business. Following the evidence that German banks use the proxy voting rights they control to place their representatives on the firm's board of directors, the paper also studies...