We recently experienced a global financial crisis so severe that only massive rescue operations by governments around the world prevented a total financial market meltdown and perhaps another global Great Depression. One necessary precondition for the crisis was the perverse, bonus-driven...

This paper utilizes a sample of firms over the years 2000–2009 to test the effects of credit rating changes, the financial crisis, interest rates, and other variables on short-term, long-term, and total debt levels on the balance sheet. Each independent variable was created using a one year...

The financial crisis of 2008 had systemic implications in the financial services industry spilling over into sectors such as the leverage loan market. I use regression analysis between two data sets (before and after the crisis) to understand the determinants of loan spreads for corporate loans...

The intent of this paper is to analyze the structural composition of the European Monetary Union and its implications for the European Financial Crisis, specifically with respect to Greece. This analysis will be driven by a trend analysis of several economic variables from 1999-2010. These...

In this paper we survey the common explanations of barter in transition economies and expose them to detailed survey data on 165 barter deals in Ukraine in 1997. The evidence does not support the notion that soft budget constraints, lack of restructuring, or that the virtual economy are the...

Do bank bailouts work? Government aid initiatives implemented to stem the current crisis raise important questions about the role of monetary policy in preventing bank failures. The scale of this bailout program defies comparison with any other aid package implemented in the post-World War II...

This paper investigates whether corporate political influence affects government investment decisions. We study the efficacy of the various forms of political influence, ranging from the relatively passive connections between firms and politicians, such as those based on politicians’ voting...

The first chapter of this dissertation estimates the relative contributions of two major exchanges on crude oil futures to the price discovery process-- Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), using trade-by-trade data in 2008. The study also empirically analyzes...

Introduction: A mere decade ago Japan’s financial system, and especially its banking system, was not only the largest but the strongest in the world. Nine of the world’s top ten banks in asset size were Japanese; the Big Four Japanese securities companies were the world’s largest; and its...