Using responses of credit default swap indexes to ECB monetary policy announcements, we isolate a novel credit policy component of monetary policy surprises. We examine how such unconventional monetary policy surprises affect investor perceptions of credit risk and the functioning of primary...

Using a sample of bank loans to firms operating in the Greek tourism sector, and regional variation of tourism activities to identify the strategic defaulted firms, we examine the impact of bank consolidation on the firms’ payment behavior. We show that a merger-induced impairment of the...

The information technology (IT) revolution coincided with the transformation of the U.S. unsecured credit market. From 1983 to 2004 households’ unsecured borrowing increased rapidly and there was a even faster increase in the number of bankruptcy filings. To study the effect of information...