This study examines how family firm characteristics affect capital structure decisions. In our analysis we disentangle the influence of three distinct components of a family firm: ownership, supervisory and management board activities by the founding family. Thereby, we use a unique panel...

We build a model of the financial sector to explain why adverse asset shocks in good economic timeslead to a sudden drying up of liquidity. Financial firms raise short-term debt in order to finance assetpurchases. When asset fundamentals worsen, debt induces firms to risk-shift; this limits...

This study provides a rigorous empirical comparison of structural and reduced-formcredit risk frameworks. As major difference we focus on the discriminative modelingof the default time. In contrast to the previous literature, we calibrate both approaches to the same data set, apply comparable...

Based on the APARCH model and two outlier detection methods, we computereliable time series of volatility asymmetry for 49 countries with relatively few ob-servations. Results show a steady increase in the asymmetry over the years for mostcountries. We nd that economic development and market...

Hedge funds are major players in the international financial system and nimble investment strategies including the use of leverage allow them to build up large positions. Yet the monitoring of systemic risks posed by the build-up of leverage is hampered by incomplete information on hedge funds'...

In a financial system where balance sheets are continuously marked to market, asset price changes show up immediately in changes in net worth, and elicit responses from financial intermediaries, who adjust the size of their balance sheets. We document evidence that marked to market leverage is...

This paper develops a dynamic trade-off model of optimal capital structure that takes intoaccount the fact that most firms have both invested assets and growth opportunities. Thesetwo sources of value react quite differently to business cycle risk. In particular, growth optionsare more sensitive...