The emergence of Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) and some spectacular investments of these funds in recent years have caused widespread attention on international financial markets. Most SWFs are domiciled in Arabian countries, East Asia and Russia. Their low transparency led to concerns that SWFs...

We analyze the determinants of bank risk during the recent financial crisis for a large international panel of listed institutions. With a comprehensive dataset manually assembled from a variety of sources, we relate several measures of ex-post banks' distress – including the likelihood of a...

Using a novel data set and new proxies for rollover losses and market illiquidity, this paper finds that market illiquidity affects corporate bond spreads beyond a liquidity premium through a “rollover risk channel”. This effect is economically significant during episodes of market...

This paper examines the extent to which differences in legal tradition, judicial efficiency, and investor protection affect debt financing and risk taking across developing economies. We find that firms in common law countries have the highest preference for debt financing while corporations in...

This paper considers the factors the allowed for the birth and facilitated the subsequent development of the equity side and the finance (or debt) side of the Islamic capital markets. The equity side of the Islamic capital markets began in 1998 with the issuance (after five years of debate) of a...

This presentation provides an overview of the major strategic trends and policies shaping the development of government securities markets in the OECD area. Attention is focused on best (or leading) practices in primary and secondary markets covering strategic issues such as the structure of...

We use cross country data on a sample of 210 large Western European banks during the ten year period from 2000 to 2009 to evaluate the impact of government ownership on bank risk and lending activity across the economic and political cycles. Three main results emerge from our analysis. First,...

“India is shining.” This was a slogan of NDA government before going to elections during 2003. Though the government changed at the centre, the same situation prevails in the economy. In fact, there was a doubt about the economic reforms of UPA government from the beginning since the left...

This paper examines the initiation of analyst coverage of IPO firms in the presence of management forecasts. For a sample of 763 Australian IPOs from 1992 to 2004, we find firms that provide a management forecast in the prospectus are more likely to receive analyst coverage, after correcting for...

The global financial and economic crisis marks an important turning point for finance and the Asian growth model. Regional consensus is now supporting economic rebalancing away from the dominant focus on exports to developed markets and towards more a more balanced economic structure supported...