Public sector corruption affects economic and financial outcomes, such as GDP growth, foreign direct investment, and government funding costs. Less is known about the spillovers from perceptions of public sector corruption on the private sector corporate bond market. In this paper, we assess the...

We analyze differences in the pricing of syndicated loans between U.S. and European loans. For credit lines, U.S. borrowers pay significantly higher spreads, but also lower fees, resulting in similar total costs of borrowing in both markets. For term loans, U.S. firms pay significantly higher...

In this essay, we investigate corporate bond trading in a fully pre-trade transparent market environment using a unique data sample from the Swiss corporate bond market. Contrary to the U.S. market, the Swiss market lists corporate bonds in a central limit order book (CLOB). While dealers place...

The growth of the European financial markets, together with the new, stricter regulations on the U.S. financial markets, has spurred a debate over the competitiveness of the U.S. financial markets. In this paper, we contribute to this debate by investigating the relative competitiveness of the...

We analyze how global and local factors affect portfolio allocation by euro area investors in emerging markets at the bond-level. First, cross-sectional analysis reveals a strong preference for home (Euro) currency bonds. Second, panel regressions, whether at the bond or aggregate flows level,...

In this paper we investigate the relationship between sovereign CDSs and Bonds, and Equity markets for 13 European countries during the period 2008-2010. We confirm the leading role incorporating new information of Equity markets during 2008-2009, but we find large evidence supporting that...

This paper examines common risk factors in Euro-denominated corporate bond returns before and after recent financial crisis. Our results suggest that level and slope of interest rate and default spread term structures significantly improve the explanatory power of asset pricing models for the...

We examine monthly excess returns for 23 Euro-denominated corporate bond indices and propose a new specification for bond asset pricing models. Specifically, we separate level and slope components of term and default risk factors and examine liquidity risk. Our results suggest that level and...

The paper analyses the drivers of sovereign risk for 31 advanced and emerging economies during the European sovereign debt crisis. It shows that a deterioration in countries' fundamentals and fundamentals contagion – a sharp rise in the sensitivity of financial markets to fundamentals – are...