We investigate the economic impacts of bank levies on bank-dependent borrowers, exploiting the surprise announcement of a bank tax by the Tokyo metropolitan government on February 7th, 2000. We find that the tax announcement had negative effects on the abnormal return of firms which depended on...

We investigate the economic impacts of bank taxation on the value of banks and that of borrowing firms, exploiting the surprise announcement of a tax by the Tokyo metropolitan government as a natural experiment. We find that the tax announcement had broad effects on the share prices of banks,...

We exploit annual variation in influential foreign interest rates to identify externally-driven components of short-run income shocks in small open economies from 1971 to 2004 and explore the statistical nature of the income–civil conflict nexus. Our results show that movements in foreign...

We present and discuss preliminary evidence suggesting that credit ratings significantly influenced prices for subprime mortgage-backed securities issued in the period leading up to the recent financial crisis. Ratings are closely correlated with prices even controlling for a rich set of...