This paper examines the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on stock returns, CDS and economic activity in the US and the five European countries (the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain) which have been most affected. The sample period covers the dates from the first confirmed COVID-19 cases in...

The Federal Reserve's (Fed) monetary policy announcements have created massive spillovers to global financial markets. Based on daily data for the sample from 1999 to 2019, this study finds that the Fed's monetary policy announcements created significant international spillovers to bond yields...

This paper explores the impacts of key policy actions by US and European authorities on stock returns of systemically important banks in Europe and US around the subprime crisis. We find that the US policy announcements had a stronger impact on the European and US banking industry than the...

Credit risk is an important issue in many finance areas, such as the determination of cost of capital, the valuation of corporate bonds and pricing of credit derivatives. Credit risk has also been a cause and consequence of the current financial crisis. Thus, methods for measuring credit risk,...

Managers conducting earnings conference calls display distinctive styles in their word choice. Some CEOs and CFOs routinely use qualifying words such as "approximately", "probably", and "maybe". They are vague talkers. Straight talkers, by contrast, use such words less frequently. Analysts and...

This paper examines the quality of credit ratings assigned to banks in Europe and the United States by the three largest rating agencies over the past two decades. We interpret credit ratings as relative assessments of creditworthiness, and define a new ordinal metric of rating error based on...

Credit Rating Agencies (CRAs) have been a market entity relatively neglected by regulators and commenters, despite the increasing importance they have had in the 20th century financial markets development. Different legal system as United States of America and European Union have both recently...

This article documents how the changing composition of U.S. publicly traded firms has prompted a decline in the long-run mean of the aggregate dividend-price ratio, most notably since the 1970s. Adjusting the dividend-price ratio for such changes resolves several issues with respect to the...

Because uncertainty is high in bad times, investors find it harder to assess firm prospects and, hence, should value analyst output more. However, higher uncertainty makes analysts' tasks harder so it is unclear if analyst output is more valuable in bad times. We find that, in bad times, analyst...