The European Commission's proposed payments card legislation and the common position reached by the European Parliament in April 2014 will harm competition, innovation, and consumers if broadly endorsed by the European Council in the coming months. The interchange fee price caps will soften...

This paper explores the effects of competition on risk-taking behavior and firm performance within the financial services industry. It does so by exploiting a regulatory change that allowed new players to enter the British mutual fund industry. Exploiting this regulatory shock, we trace...

We consider comprehensive data on crowdfunding in the U.S., including debt (marketplace lending), rewards, donations, and equity crowdfunding, to formally test for the first time if banks are complements or substitutes to crowdfunding. The data indicate that bank failures in a county are...

In March of 2000 the New York Stock Exchange proposed a merger with The Nasdaq Stock Market. Applying a qualitative assessment to the proposed merger from the organizations' perspective it is argued that the merger would be favorable for both organizations. Applying a quantitative assessment to...

Pursuing delinquent borrowers requires considerable effort, and creditors may lack the incentive to exert this costly effort in uncompetitive banking sectors. To examine this, we use a uniquely large dataset of public and private corporate bankruptcy filings spanning a banking-sector reform that...

We construct a director network for 972 SPACs that raised $271 billion from investors. First, we show that SPAC's investors receive lower returns and redeem more shares when directors sit on the board of another SPAC that IPOed later but found a target earlier. Second, we show that conflicted...

This paper employs firm-level panel data of 57 incumbent and entrant firms for 23 European countries in the decade from 2003 to 2012. We examine the impact of service- and facility-based competition on firm-level investment as well as the strategic effects underlying infrastructure investment...

This paper explores the access charge for the use of the Italian rail infrastructure. Access problems arise when the provision of a complete service to end users requires the combination of two or more inputs, one of which is non-competitive (OECD, 2004). It is a well-known fact that excessive...