This paper explores the relation between institutional quality, trust and stock market participation. In our theoretical motivation, agents update their beliefs in a Bayesian manner based on their historical observations on frauds and they choose to invest in the stock market if their subjective...

Based on a screening model, we hypothesize that borrower risk will be over- (under-)priced in recessions (booms), and the loan spreads' sensitivity to default risk as a function of economic growth will be inverse U-shaped. We test this prediction using a sample of 5,300 U.S. commercial loans...

In contrast to the efficient-market hypothesis (EMH), the noisy-market hypothesis (NMH) asserts that prices are but noisy indications of fundamental values. We study losses in certainty equivalents of investing according to one hypothesis (NMH or EMH) when the other is true. Our findings suggest...