This paper analyzes yield spreads on sovereign debt issued by emerging markets using modern data from the 1990s and newly-collected historical data on debt traded in London during 1870–1913, a previous “golden era” for international capital market integration. Applying several empirical...

Financial frictions have been identified as key factors affecting economic fluctuations and growth. But, can institutional reforms reduce financial frictions? Based on a canonical investment model, we consider two potential channels: (i) financial transaction costs at the firm level; and (ii)...

Using newly-constructed data covering the last decade, we document that, in most of forty markets, when added to the main index, firms’ returns experience an increase in comovement with the rest of the index, reflected in higher beta and greater explanatory power of the market return. Stock...

In this paper we investigate the matching process between banks and large borrowers that switch from single to multiple bank lending relationships in the corporate loan market. Using a unique dataset on all large credit exposures (about 214,000) of all Israeli commercial banks in the period...

Business groups constitute one of the most prevalent and intriguing modes of organizing and managing economic activities through inter-firm coordination and cooperation. The extensive empirical literature on this phenomenon is focused primarily on presenting cross-sectional evidence, and much...

Identifying the corporate controller (controlling shareholder, ultimate owner) is an essential prerequisite for any debate on the corporate governance of a specific firm and of entire markets. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive, precise and economically sound method for identifying...