This paper analyzes whether the political connections of listed firms in the United States affect the cost and terms of loan contracts. Using a hand-collected data set of the political connections of S&P 500 companies over the 2003-2008 time period, we find that the cost of bank loans is...

The U.S. high cost loop support (HCLS) program, formerly referred to as the Universal Service Fund (USF), has been a key component of the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) program to promote telephone access in rural, high cost areas. This study uses data from 1140 rural telecom firms in...

This paper examines how government regulation in developing countries affects the form of corruption between business customers and service providers in the telecom sector. We match the World Bank enterprise-level data on bribes with a unique cross-country telecom regulation dataset collected by...

Using a large, unique, firm-level dataset from the Chinese manufacturing sector, we study important factors that are related to emission intensity for three pollutants in China – sulfur dioxide, wastewater, and soot. Our main findings are as follows: 1) compared to state-owned enterprises...

We analyze the importance of policy uncertainty to textual disclosure in the U.S. over the 1996 to 2015 period. We find that policy uncertainty increases textual disclosure length, lowers readability, and increases the tone of uncertainty and negativity. Our strong, robust evidence implies that...

Lending corruption is an important agency problem for banks. Using data from the World Bank Business Environmental Survey, we find that in countries with more lending corruption, banks give more favorable loan terms to borrowers. This relation is stronger when firms are under more financing...

Given the importance of transparency for the governance, efficiency, and stability of banks, we evaluate whether economic shocks that relax a bank's dependence on external capital markets alter the cost-benefit calculations of bank managers concerning voluntary information disclosure. We measure...

This paper tests the effect of the establishment of risk management committee on bank risk, bank loan performance and bank value. The Dodd Frank Act of 2010 provides us with quasi-experimental variation on risk management committee establishment that facilitates identification. I present two...

We examine whether media coverage influences firms' debt financing and, more importantly, the channels through which it occurs. We find that more media coverage significantly reduces firms' reliance on bank loans while increasing their nonbank debt financing. This effect is concentrated among...

We analyze the importance of policy uncertainty to textual disclosure in the U.S. over the 1996 to 2015 period. Consistent with the information-acceleration view, we find that policy uncertainty increases textual disclosure quantity evident in disclosure length. We also document that policy...