This paper investigates the economic consequences of firms connected to organized crime (criminal firms) and shows that when a criminal firm is eliminated from an industry, the performance of non-criminal competitors significantly increases. We also show that the positive effect on the...

Purpose: This paper aims to investigate whether the level of social capital of the region in which a firm is headquartered affects its tax avoidance activities. Social capital can be defined as the mutual trust in society and literature shows that firms headquartered in high social capital...

Using branch-level data on public and private U.S. banking institutions we investigate the importance of branch religiosity in shaping bank risk-taking behavior. Our results show robust evidence that branch religiosity is negatively related to bank risk-taking. This effect persists after...

The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) of 2005 significantly expanded the exemptions from the normal workings of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. Using a large sample of U.S. banks we study investors' reaction to news about the promulgation of the BAPCPA repo ‘safe...

The paper investigates the role of CEO's equity and risk incentives in boosting securitization in the financial industry and in motivating executives to reduce the perceived risk while betting on it. Using a sample of US financial institutions over the period 2003-2009 we document that CEOs with...