Using a dataset covering 3 million commercial borrower financial statements, we document a substantial, nearly monotonic decline in banks’ use of attested financial statements (AFS) in lending over the past two decades. Two market forces help explain this trend. First, technological advances...

This paper examines banks' disclosures and loss recognition in the financial crisis and identifies several core issues for the link between accounting and financial stability. Our analysis suggests that, going into the financial crisis, banks' disclosures about relevant risk exposures were...

I examine how credit reporting affects where firms access credit and how lenders contract with them. I use within firm-time and lender-time tests that exploit lenders joining a credit bureau and sharing information in a staggered pattern. I find information sharing reduces relationship-switching...

In this study, we seek to understand whether soft information conveyed by contracting language found in private loan agreements is informative regarding borrower risk. We proxy for credit-risk-relevant soft information using Loughran and McDonald's (2011) uncertainty measure. We first examine...

Using a data set that records banks' ongoing requests of information from small commercial borrowers, we examine when banks use financial statements to monitor borrowers after loan origination. We find that banks request financial statements for half the loans and this variation is related to...

Using a dataset which records banks' ongoing requests of information from small commercial borrowers, we examine when banks use financial statements to monitor borrowers after loan origination. We find banks request financial statements for half the loans and this variation is related to...

We focus on the determinants and potentially associated benefits of relationship banking. Based on existing literature and the unique role intangible assets might play regarding asymmetric information, we derive three testable predictions. Using rich data on firm-bank relationships in Germany,...

Using a comprehensive dataset of Italian SMEs, we find that differences between private and public information on firm creditworthiness affect the decision to issue traded debt securities. Specifically, holding public information constant, firms with better private fundamentals are more likely...