We provide novel systematic evidence on the extent and terms of direct lending by nonbank financial institutions, and explore whether banks are still special in lending to informationally opaque firms. Analyzing hand-collected data for a random sample of publicly-traded middle-market firms...

In contrast to bonds, cov-lite loans do not require SEC registration and are not subject to securities laws. We show that this distinction plays an important role in firms' choice between funding through cov-lite loans and bonds and helps understand why the market share of cov-lite loans has...

Analyzing hand-collected credit agreements data for a random sample of middle-market firms during 2010-2015, we find that a third of all loans is extended directly by nonbank financial intermediaries. Nonbanks lend to less profitable and more levered firms that undergo larger changes in size...

From 1973 to 2014, the common stock of U.S. banks with loan growth in the top quartile of banks over a three-year period significantly underperforms the common stock of banks with loan growth in the bottom quartile over the next three years. The benchmark-adjusted cumulative difference in...

We investigate whether a bank’s performance during the 1998 crisis, which was viewed at the time as the most dramatic crisis since the Great Depression, predicts its performance during the recent financial crisis. One hypothesis is that a bank that has an especially poor experience in a crisis...