Before the beginning of the euro-area crisis, fees (premiums) for Credit Default Swaps (CDS) for the same entity (country) but nominated in different currencies were nearly equal. This is still true for non-euro area countries during the crisis; but these differences increased dramatically for...

According to the financial press, firms with low leverage have lower distress risk due to their reduced exposure to the credit market, especially during credit crises. Compared to their conventional and socially responsible (SRI) counterparts, sharia compliant (SC) stocks are low-leverage...

The principles of behavioral psychology can explain how crashes occur. In particular, the concept of "stimulus generalization" tells us that organisms tend to respond in the same way to similar stimuli. In a crash, or pre-crash, context, several stimuli - including rising prices, above-average...

A growing consensus exists that climate change risks have important implications for financial stability. Following Weyzig et all (2014) methodology, this paper quantifies the (syndicated) loan exposure to elevated environmental risk sectors of the banking system in the US, EU, China, Japan and...

We study the impact of the COVID-19 recession on capital structure of publicly listed U.S. firms. Our estimates suggest leverage (Net Debt/Asset) decreased by 5.3 percentage points from the pre-shock mean of 19.6 percent, while debt maturity increased moderately. This de-leveraging effect is...

The alarming rise in drinking water pollution across the U.S. is often attributed to cost cutting pressures faced by local officials. We know little, however, about why these pressures are so severe for some cities compared to others. We present a new theory to argue that an important...

The financial crises since 2007 have inspired many suggestions for reform. In order to evaluate proposed changes to financial markets and their regulation, we need to agree on the goals and properties of the financial system which we are trying to create as much as come up with ideas for reform....

I develop a dynamic equilibrium model that incorporates incorrect beliefs about crash risk and use it to explain the available empirical evidence on financial booms and busts. In the model, if a long period of time goes by without a crash, some investors' perceived crash risk falls below the...

The research question is to investigate if supplementary tethered currencies might reduce financial system risks and provide a superior fallback position to Bitcoin in a crisis? To investigate the question, a hypothetical $Z supplementary cost carrying currency is considered whose value is...