The imminent failure of prime brokers during the 2008 financial crisis caused a sudden decrease in the leverage afforded hedge funds. This decrease resulted from the asymmetrical payoff to rehypothecation lenders—the ultimate financiers, through prime brokers, to hedge funds. Seemingly...

Using novel data on bank applications to the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), we study the effect of government assistance on bank risk taking. Bailed-out banks initiate riskier loans and shift assets toward riskier securities after receiving government support. However, this shift in risk...

The literature on distressed firms has focused on these firms’ investment, capital structure, and labor decisions. This paper investigates a novel aspect of firm behavior in distress: how financial health affects a firm׳s lobbying and, consequently, its relationship with the government. We...

Using daily data from January 1999 to December 2011, we examine U.S. stock returns (S&P 500, Dow Jones, NASDAQ, and Russell 2000) based on a wide range of information, including equity VIX volatility, inflation expectations, interest rates, gold prices, and the USD/Euro exchange rate. The focus...

This paper investigates the links between price returns for 25 commodities and stocks over the period from January 2001 to November 2011, by paying a particular attention to energy raw materials. Relying on the dynamic conditional correlation (DCC) GARCH methodology, we show that the...

Since the conquest of hyperinflation, with the Real Plan, in 1994, the Brazilian financial system has grown from early infancy to late adolescence. We describe the process of maturing with emphasis on the defining features of the Brazilian financial system over the last 20 years: (1)...

We analyze the determinants of interest rate spreads of different loan categories in the Czech Republic during 2004–2011. We employ a detailed bank supervisory dataset that allows us to construct the actual spreads for four loan categories, namely small and large corporate loans, consumer...

Using the asymmetric dynamic conditional correlation (A-DCC) model developed by Cappiello et al. (2006), this paper empirically analyzes the conditional correlation between treasury and swap markets from February 9, 2006 to May 31, 2011, and makes two key contributions. First, the dynamics of...

This paper tries to shed light on the historical analogies of the current crisis. To that end we compare the current sample distribution of Dow Jones Industrial Average Index returns for a 769-day period (from 15 September 2008, the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, to 30 September 2011), with all...

Despite the Government of Indonesia’s commitment to address human security as stated in its ambitious medium-term development plan and the Millennium Development Goals, poverty in its multidimensionality remain a major issue in Indonesia as a significant proportion of the Indonesian population...