Government bailouts undermine the core principles of capitalism. They are also expensive, unjust, unpopular, and usually represent dramatic deviations from the rule of law. However, they are also, in some cases, necessary. The “problem of bailouts,” then, is that they are almost always...

This is a chapter for the forthcoming book in West Publishing Company's Inside the Minds Series focusing on Financial Services Enforcement and Compliance (published by Aspatore Books). This chapter provides an overview of nature and current state of the markets for the equity side and debt...

Traditional methods for evaluating corporate credit risk rarely consider the impact of the macro economy on corporate value and performance. We argue that lenders and management can obtain valuable information about the need for and approach to restructuring by decomposing default predictions...

A common method of valuing the equity in highly leveraged transactions is the flows-to-equity method. When applying this method various formulas can be used to calculate the time-varying cost of equity. In this paper we show that some commonly used formulas are inconsistent with the assumptions...

We examine chief executive officer (CEO) career and compensation changes for large firms filing for Chapter 11. One-third of the incumbent CEOs maintain executive employment, and these CEOs experience a median compensation change of zero. However, incumbent CEOs leaving the executive labor...

Cases the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) pursues against the directors and officers of failed commercial banks for (gross) negligence are important for the corporate governance of U.S. commercial banks. These cases shape the kernel of bank corporate governance, as they guide...

The lenders that fund Chapter 11 reorganizations exert significant influence over the bankruptcy process through the contract associated with the debtor-in-possession (“DIP”) loan. In this Article, we study a large sample of DIP loan contracts and document a trend: over the past three...

This paper uses a two-step methodology to examine the relationship between managerial cost inefficiency and the takeover of U.S. thrifts during a period of market liberalization and widespread takeover activity, 1994 to 2000. In the first stage using stochastic cost frontiers, controllable...

Secured lenders have recently demanded a new condition in distressed debt restructurings: competing secured lenders must lose priority. We model the implications of this "creditor-on-creditor violence" trend. In our dynamic model, secured lenders enjoy higher priority in default. However,...

In this paper, we infer motives for trade initiation from market sidedness. We define trading as more two-sided (one-sided) if the correlation between the numbers of buyerand seller-initiated trades increases (decreases), and assess changes in sidedness (relative to a control sample) around...