Lack of transparency in securitization transactions significantly contributed to the severe financial crisis of 20072009. To increase transparency we propose a new mechanism: financial claims with fingerprints. They would allow market participants at each stage of the securitization process to...

We propose a new approach to examine sell-side analysts’ career concerns by relating their forecast boldness to their employers’ news flows. Specifically, we use banking sector news to proxy for the severity of career concerns. Analysts follow more closely the consensus forecast when the...

We analyze the impact of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) on corporate bond ratings issued by credit rating agencies (CRAs). We find no evidence that Dodd-Frank disciplines CRAs to provide more accurate and informative credit ratings. Instead, following...

The financial crisis has revealed fatal institutional and structural deficits at the finance market. Politics has reacted to the financial crisis with a sea of legal bills and regulations. But all regulating efforts are merely system-imminent reparation measures and do not solve the core...

The hedge fund industry represents a significant and viable alternative for mainstream investment business clientèle, as well as a growing number of sophisticated high net worth individuals. The hedge fund raison d'être has been relative independence of other (more traditional) asset classes...

In this study, we examine whether sell-side security analysts gain access to value relevant information through political connections. We measure analysts' political connections based on political contributions at the brokerage house level. We argue that if brokerages are able to obtain private...

We discuss the literature on the shift from stakeholder to shareholder finance behind the Great Financial Crisis (GFC). Traditional banks generally maximized stakeholder value (STV). But before the GFC also many of them started maximizing shareholder value (SHV). Moving from STV to SHV often...

This paper uses new data on the timing of sovereign defaults during 1869-1914 to quantify an informational channel of contagion via shared financial intermediaries. Concerns over reputation incentivized Britain's merchant banks to monitor, advise, and occasionally bail out sovereigns. Default...

This paper examines the impact of analyst corporate site visits on stock price crash risk using a unique data set of Chinese A-share stocks listed on the Shenzhen stock exchange (SZSE) over the 2012–2019 period. We find that the frequency of analyst corporate site visits is positively...

In this paper we explore how the 2008 financial crisis impacted sell-side analysts' research as well as the market reactions to the publication of such research. Based on over 350,000 analyst reports from 2005 to 2010, we find that during the crisis analysts only disproportionately adapted their...