In this paper, we empirically investigate two economic issues (1) the factors that affect the primary market spread on non-U.S. asset-backed securities and (2) whether investors rely solely on credit ratings and ignore other credit-related factors. We do so by using a panel-data fixed-effects...

The current study aims to provide an anatomy of the rise and fall of the subprime mortgage market in the US, by surveying the key economic and institutional determinants that have boosted the growth of the market since 2003 and those that have contributed to the abrupt decline since Summer 2007....

Credit derivatives enable banks to transfer selected credit risks to third parties. An empirical model is developed for the motivation for bank participation in credit derivative markets and, conditional on participation, the factors that determine the volume of business transacted....

This study is motivated by the development of credit-related instruments and signals of stock price movements of large banks during the recent financial crisis. What is common to most of the empirical studies in this field is that they concentrate on modeling the conditional mean. However,...

Borrowers' housing equity is an important component of their wealth and a critical determinant of their vulnerability to shocks. In this paper, we create a unique data set that allows us to provide a comprehensive look at the ratio of housing debt to housing values - what we refer to as...

In this paper we challenge the view that corporate bonds are always arm's length debt. We analyze the effect of bond ratings on the stock price return to acquirers in M&A transactions, which tend to have significant effects on creditor wealth. We find acquirers abnormal returns to be higher if...

Amid an economic downturn caused in part by financial deregulation, it is odd to most people outside the Beltway that Congress should be actively considering (and indeed have passed in the House) a raft of proposal for more financial deregulation. Yet the politics for both parties require...

This study examines the influence of US banks' revenue diversification on their profitability, equity capital, and credit risk, by size. By a simple decomposition of Return On Capital (ROC) I show how popular revenue diversification measures affect both the ROC and risk-adjusted ROC. Based on...

This study examines the infuence of US banks' revenue diversification on profitability, equity capital, and credit risk by size. By a simple decomposition of Return On Capital (ROC) I show how popular revenue diversification measures affect both the ROC and risk-adjusted ROC. I find substantial...