Access to credit remains a universal challenge for firms, particularly for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). While numerous studies have examined the determinants of credit access, focusing primarily on borrower characteristics, lender policies, and formal institutional factors such as...

This study investigates the effect of similarity in risk attitudes between lenders and borrowers on loan contracting. We find that when banks and lenders have similar risk attitudes they are more likely to sign loan contracts. Moreover, such contracts are associated with lower spreads, longer...

Using a novel dataset of firm-level perceived trustworthiness from the news media and social media, we find that lending banks charge significantly higher loan spread on firms with lower trustworthiness. Loans to these firms also tend to have shorter loan maturities, more financial covenants,...

I examine the impact of corporate Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) profiles on the formation of lending relationships between firms and banks, and the implications of this matching for loan pricing. I find that high ESG firms are more likely to receive a bank loan, and their loans...

Firm prestige reduces the cost of bank loans. Specifically, when borrowers are included in Fortune's list of “America's Most Admired Companies” (MAC), their loan costs decline by approximately 13 bps or US$5.122 million, on average. The effect appears causal. The negative relation between...

This paper investigates the impacts of board's corruption culture on the financing costs of firms. Evidence shows that lending banks attach higher loan spreads, higher total costs of borrowing, and stricter covenants to firms with a strong corruption culture in their boards. The results are...

This paper investigates whether firms' pollution records influence their financing costs. Evidence shows that lending banks demand significantly higher loan spreads, higher total borrowing costs, shorter loan maturities, smaller loan sizes, and greater collateral from firms with higher levels of...

In this paper we review the pricing and model calibration of Credit Default Swaps referring to both the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) CDS contract and credit model standardization guidelines. Furthermore we provide an Excel pricing workbook to supplement the materials...

This paper analyzes the role of bank credit in firms' export performance. We use Italian bank-firm matched data and contribute to the existing literature by focusing on the link between bank-credit and exports in 'normal times' (1997-2008) and measuring access to credit with hard data on the...

I provide new evidence on the renegotiation of financial contracts using a comprehensive sample of over 90,000 debt contract renegotiations. I study whether the demand for monitoring determines the renegotiation intensity, defined as either the renegotiation frequency over a period of time or...