Governance at banks, especially major banks, requires further reform, especially with respect to incentives. Supervisors are concerned that incentives may make executives prone to take “excessive” risks. Shareholders are concerned that banks rarely earn their cost of capital.What's needed is...

Pricing bonds is generally one of the earliest applications of time value of money in a finance curriculum. A bond price incorporates the use of an annuity and an individual discounted cash flow while also being a “fundamental” financial security. This paper works through the pedagogy of...

We assess the economic and institutional factors that have driven the growth of debt in China. We ask whether there is a clear strategy for managing the risk that such debt levels pose and assess the likelihood that policy actions will prove successful. In particular, we explain how much of the...

An increase in the observable excess demand for the outstanding bonds of a firm is associated with a significant increase in the probability of that firm subsequently issuing a bond. Borrowing from the microstructure literature, excess demand at the firm-month level is measured using order...

On March 10, 2016, the European Central Bank (ECB) announced the Corporate Sector Purchase Programme (CSPP) - commonly known as corporate quantitative easing (QE) - to improve the financing conditions of the Eurozone's real economy and strengthen the pass-through of unconventional monetary...

This paper studies the relationship between banks' holdings of domestic sovereign securities and credit growth to the private sector in emerging market and developing economies. Higher banks' holdings of government debt are associated with a lower credit growth to the private sector and with a...

We examine how accounting-based compensation plans influence a firm's contracts with its creditors. After granting long-term accounting-based compensation plans (LTAPs) to CEOs, firms pay lower spreads and have fewer restrictive covenants in new bank loans. Mechanisms leading to lower borrowing...

Unlike traditional bonds, Floating-rate bonds (FRB) do not have a fixed rate coupon. Instead, their rate fluctuates or floats based on the market plus a spread. As a result, FRBs tend to be less vulnerable to interest-rate fluctuations. Many believe FRBs can help preserve principal, while...

We analyze whether institutional investors’ corporate bond holdings are associated with how actively they vote and monitor their equity investments. We document that institutions conduct more governance research and are less likely to follow proxy advisor vote recommendations for companies...