Individual equity securities are prone to large and abrupt stock price drops. In this article, the authors provide a framework for measuring, forecasting, and avoiding such stock price crashes. First, the authors identify the events that most frequently cause stock prices to crash, and then they...

This paper examines how financial reporting regulations affect, and respond to, macroeconomic cycles by exploring a positive framework in which regulators subject to political pressures respond to cyclical demands by borrowers and lenders. We establish that, as economic conditions initially...

In the wake of the recent financial meltdown, financial reporting under both North American generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and international financial reporting standards (IFRS) has involved renewed attention to the structures and constraints of “mark-to-market” and similar...

Despite its dubious role during the global financial crisis of 2008, risk management has continued its expansion. This paper addresses the question why risk management, in the face of its evident failure to manage risks during the crisis, has retained its importance even today. We build on the...

The seeds for the 2007-09 financial collapse were sewn over many years and nurtured by ill-advised governmental housing policy, the presence of pervasive fraud both large and small and the widespread failure of personal integrity. A chronology of bad choices made by individuals and the...

We show that financial shocks to lenders affect the composition of covenants in new debt contracts in a way that cannot be explained by borrower fundamentals. Using two distinct measures of lender-specific shocks—defaults in a lender's corporate loan portfolio that occur outside the borrower's...

The Great Recession from 2007/08 to date (2016) has challenged policymakers in significant ways. The initial challenge became a mission to rescue the banking sector, which had major implications for public services. The severe constraints on public finances after the rescue resulted in cutbacks...

This paper presents a model for predicting crises in small businesses using early-warning signals. It summarises the results of two separate studies carried out in Finland (with 72 percent response) and the UK (26 percent) on the decision process of corporate analysts (Finland) and bank managers...

We analyze the main forces affecting financial system pro-cyclicality (the fact that developments in the financial sector can amplify business cycle fluctuations). We first review some major structural developments in financial markets that may influence pro-cyclicality and that have been...