Do stocks of admired companies yield admirable returns? Are increases in admiration followed by high stock returns, and how reliable is the relation between admiration and returns? These questions are answered by the authors based on their study of Fortune magazine's annual list "America's Most...

The global financial crisis brought government guarantees to the forefront of the debate. Based on a review of frictions that hinder financial contracting, this paper concludes that the common justifications for government guarantees—i.e., principal-agent frictions or un-internalized...

This paper examines changes in bank capital and capital regulations since the global financial crisis, in the Europe and Central Asia region. It shows that banks in Europe and Central Asia are better capitalized, as measured by regulatory capital ratios, than they were prior to the crisis....

This paper summarizes the latest update of the World Bank Bank Regulation and Supervision Survey. The paper explores and summarizes the evolution in bank capital regulations, capitalization of banks, market discipline, and supervisory power since the global financial crisis. It shows that...

Short-term debt exposes firms to credit supply shocks and liquidity risk. Short-term debt can also reduce potential agency conflicts between managers and shareholders by exposing managers to more frequent monitoring by the market. This paper examines whether internal monitoring through...

Deposit insurance is a widely adopted policy to promote financial stability in the banking sector. Deposit insurance helps ensure depositors' confidence in the financial system and prevents contagious bank runs, but it also comes with an unintended consequence of encouraging banks to take on...

Using close to 800,000 (2,000,000) transactions by 66,000 (303,000) households in the United States (in Finland), this paper shows that individual investors with longer holding periods choose to hold less liquid stocks in their portfolios, consistent with Amihud and Mendelson's (1986) theory of...

This paper examines the association between the default risk of foreign bank subsidiaries and their parents during the global financial crisis, with the purpose of understanding what factors can help insulate affiliates from their parents. The paper finds evidence of a significant positive...