This paper examines firms' adaptation to long-term changes in climatic conditions. Using detailed information on establishments owned by U.S. public firms, we show that higher abnormal temperatures over the previous five years in a county lead to a significant reduction in local employment and...

We examine the effect of sovereign credit rating downgrades on firms' earnings management. Using the exogenous variation in credit ratings caused by sovereign rating downgrades from 61 countries, we show that firms reduce discretionary accruals after sovereign downgrades and are likely to...

Unlike broad-based equity ownership by employees, ownership of company debt by rank-and-file employees has not received much attention. We argue that company debt held by employees in the form of in-company deposits can monitor risk-taking and facilitate risk discovery. Employee deposits have...

Using a regression discontinuity design, this study shows that strengthened bank control rights triggered by loan covenant violations lead to an increase in cash tax savings and a reduction in tax risk. This effect is driven largely by firms with more severe shareholder–debtholder conflicts....

This paper examines whether and how banks adapt to long-run climate change. We show that banks increase their loan loss provisions by 7% in response to a 1°F increase in three-year weighted average abnormal temperature. Such an effect is more pronounced when banks have greater pre-existing...

This paper examines the network effect of information acquisition due to a borrower default. We find that a borrower default is associated with an increase in information acquisitions for non-defaulting borrowers that share the same relationship bank. Such an effect is stronger when the lending...

This paper uses a data set from a leading American subprime lender, which contains detailed information on borrower and loan characteristics. We find that financial professionals are less likely to become delinquent. This effect cannot be explained by borrower characteristics, such as income,...

This paper uses a dataset from one of the leading subprime lenders in America, containing detailed information on borrower and loan characteristics, finds that borrowers from the financial industry, who have higher financial literacy, are less likely to default. This effect cannot be explained...

This paper shows, for the first time, how liquidity infusions from government bailouts affect loan modification in the mortgage market. The design of the Pooling and Service Agreement leads mortgage servicers to prefer foreclosure to modification when the servicers are liquidity constrained....