Research papers in empirical finance and financial econometrics are among the most widely cited, downloaded and viewed articles in the discipline of Finance. The special issue presents several papers by leading scholars in the field on “Recent Developments in Financial Economics and...

We analyze the term structure of illiquidity premiums as the difference between the yield curves of two major bond segments that are both government guaranteed but differ in their liquidity. We show that its characteristics strongly depend on the economic situation. In crisis times, illiquidity...

This article examines the impact of regulation on lending standards during the mortgage boom. We exploit the overall regulatory wedge between banks and independent mortgage companies (IMCs) and a variation in this regulatory wedge across states induced by a cross-sectional variation in state...

An originate-to-distribute (OTD) model of lending, where the originator of a loan sells it to various third parties, was a popular method of mortgage lending before the onset of the subprime mortgage crisis. We show that banks with high involvement in the OTD market during the pre-crisis period...

Using daily options prices on the Eurostoxx 50 stock index over the whole year 2008, we compare the performance of three popular stochastic volatility models (Heston, 1993; Bates, 1996; Heston and Nandi, 2'007, in addition to the traditional Black-Scholes model and a proprietary trading desk model. We...

In this paper we present a simple closed form stock price formula, which captures empirical regularities of high frequency trading (HFT), based on two factors: (1) exposure to hedge factor; and (2) hedge factor volatility. Thus, the parsimonious formula is not based on fundamental valuation. For...

Many commentators have argued that if the Federal Reserve had followed a stricter monetary policy earlier this decade when the housing bubble was forming, and if Congress had not deregulated banking but had imposed tighter financial standards, the housing boom and bust - and the subsequent...

We examine the relation between bank risk management procedures and sales of mortgages during the financial crisis of 2007-2009. Research suggests that banks employing an originate-to-distribute strategy devoted little effort to screening, thereby diminishing their ability to sell loans during...

This paper develops and implements an equilibrium model of systemic risk. The model derives a systemic risk measure, loss beta, in characterizing all too-big-to-fail banks using a capital insurance equilibrium. By constructing each bank's loss portfolio with a recent accounting approach, we...