Although the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) has gained increasing attention among investors, the extent to which ESG is compensated systematically in the market remains to be investigated. On the outperformance of responsible investing (RI) which incorporates ESG into investment...

This paper investigates the relationship between female CEOs and insolvency risk of U.S. property-casualty insurance companies. We show that female CEOs are associated with lower insurer insolvency propensity, higher z-score, and lower standard deviation of return on assets. These findings are...

In August 2007 the United Kingdom experienced its first bank run in over 140 years. Although Northern Rock was not a particularly large bank (it was at the time ranked 7th in terms of assets) it was nevertheless a significant retail bank and a substantial mortgage lender. In fact, ten years...

We use dynamic panel analysis to examine whether credit rating agencies achieve what they claim to achieve, namely, look into the future when assigning their ratings. We find that Moody's ratings help predict individual financial ratios over a horizon of up to five years. Ratings also predict a...

The trade-off theory on capital structure is tested by modelling the capital structure target as the solution to a maximization problem. This solution maps asset volatility and loss given default to optimal leverage. By applying nonlinear structural equation modelling, these unobservable...

Liquidity and solvency are conditional for banks' existence. They are endangered during banking crises. Since the banking crises of the National Banking Era in the USA are no exceptions, the question remains whether the foundation of the Federal Reserve System offered an adequate solution to the...

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 analyze portfolio credit risk in light of dynamic quot;frailty,quot; by which the credit qualities of different firms depend on common unobservable time-varying default covariates. Frailty is estimated to have a large impact on estimated conditional mean default rates, above and beyond those...

For nearly two years, the two of us have had a running discussion of the costs and benefits of automatic stays in bankruptcy for qualified financial contracts (QFCs) such as derivatives and repurchase agreements, particularly those held by systemically important major dealer banks. Under current...