Is the Corporate Loan Market Globally Integrated? A Pricing Puzzle

We offer evidence that interest rate spreads on syndicated loans to corporate borrowers are economically significantly smaller in Europe than in the United States, other things equal. Differences in borrower, loan, and lender characteristics do not appear to explain this phenomenon. Borrowers overwhelmingly issue in their natural home market and bank portfolios display home bias. This may explain why pricing discrepancies are not competed away, though their causes remain a puzzle. Thus, important determinants of loan origination market outcomes remain to be identified, home bias appears to be material for pricing, and corporate financing costs differ across Europe and the United States

Message Journal, Issue 5: COVID-19 SPECIAL ISSUE Capturing visual insights, thoughts and reflections on 2020/21 and beyond...

If there is a theme running through the Message Covid-19 special issue, it is one of caring. Of our own and others’ resilience and wellbeing, of friendship and community, of students, practitioners and their futures, of social justice, equality and of doing the right thing. The veins of designing with care run through the edition, wide and deep. It captures, not designers as heroes, but those with humble views, exposing the need to understand a diversity of perspectives when trying to comprehend the complexity that Covid-19 continues to generate. As graphic designers, illustrators and visual communicators, contributors have created, documented, written, visualised, reflected, shared, connected and co-created, designed for good causes and re-defined what it is to be a student, an academic and a designer during the pandemic. This poignant period in time has driven us, through isolation, towards new rules of living, and new ways of working; to see and map the world in a different light. A light that is uncertain, disjointed, and constantly being redefined. This Message issue captures responses from the graphic communication design community in their raw state, to allow contributors to communicate their experiences through both their written and visual voice. Thus, the reader can discern as much from the words as the design and visualisations. Through this issue a substantial number of contributions have focused on personal reflection, isolation, fear, anxiety and wellbeing, as well as reaching out to community, making connections and collaborating. This was not surprising in a world in which connection with others has often been remote, and where ‘normal’ social structures of support and care have been broken down. We also gain insight into those who are using graphic communication design to inspire and capture new ways of teaching and learning, developing themselves as designers, educators, and activists, responding to social justice and to do good; gaining greater insight into society, government actions and conspiracy. Introduction: Victoria Squire - Coping with Covid: Community, connection and collaboration: James Alexander & Carole Evans, Meg Davies, Matthew Frame, Chae Ho Lee, Alma Hoffmann, Holly K. Kaufman-Hill, Joshua Korenblat, Warren Lehrer, Christine Lhowe, Sara Nesteruk, Cat Normoyle & Jessica Teague, Kyuha Shim. - Coping with Covid: Isolation, wellbeing and hope: Sadia Abdisalam, Tom Ayling, Jessica Barness, Megan Culliford, Stephanie Cunningham, Sofija Gvozdeva, Hedzlynn Kamaruzzaman, Merle Karp, Erica V. P. Lewis, Kelly Salchow Macarthur, Steven McCarthy, Shelly Mayers, Elizabeth Shefrin, Angelica Sibrian, David Smart, Ane Thon Knutsen, Isobel Thomas, Darryl Westley. - Coping with Covid: Pedagogy, teaching and learning: Bernard J Canniffe, Subir Dey, Aaron Ganci, Elizabeth Herrmann, John Kilburn, Paul Nini, Emily Osborne, Gianni Sinni & Irene Sgarro, Dave Wood, Helena Gregory, Colin Raeburn & Jackie Malcolm. - Coping with Covid: Social justice, activism and doing good: Class Action Collective, Xinyi Li, Matt Soar, Junie Tang, Lisa Winstanley. - Coping with Covid: Society, control and conspiracy: Diana Bîrhală, Maria Borțoi, Patti Capaldi, Tânia A. Cardoso, Peter Gibbons, Bianca Milea, Rebecca Tegtmeyer, Danne Wo

Current events in insurance: Three essays on capital, learning, and geography

This dissertation combines three essays on topics related to the industrial organization of insurance markets. The unifying theme is that each essay addresses an empirical aspect of a topic of current interest in the academic literature on insurance markets. The first chapter utilizes policy-level insurance data to test a theory of asymmetric information among competing insurance companies, providing a contribution to the empirical literature on asymmetric information in insurance markets. The second chapter uses a novel firm-level dataset of European insurance companies to compare the operating efficiency of domestic versus foreign insurers. The results of this work are important in understanding the role of geography and globalization in the financial service industry. The third chapter uses a frontier efficiency methodology to test hypotheses concerning the build-up of equity capital in the U.S. property-liability industry during the late 1990s. In addition to testing a variety of theories about capital structure, the work identifies a penalty associated with holding excess financial capital. In concert, these three essays provide a contemporary look at important issues in insurance economics

Current events in insurance: Three essays on capital, learning, and geography

This dissertation combines three essays on topics related to the industrial organization of insurance markets. The unifying theme is that each essay addresses an empirical aspect of a topic of current interest in the academic literature on insurance markets. The first chapter utilizes policy-level insurance data to test a theory of asymmetric information among competing insurance companies, providing a contribution to the empirical literature on asymmetric information in insurance markets. The second chapter uses a novel firm-level dataset of European insurance companies to compare the operating efficiency of domestic versus foreign insurers. The results of this work are important in understanding the role of geography and globalization in the financial service industry. The third chapter uses a frontier efficiency methodology to test hypotheses concerning the build-up of equity capital in the U.S. property-liability industry during the late 1990s. In addition to testing a variety of theories about capital structure, the work identifies a penalty associated with holding excess financial capital. In concert, these three essays provide a contemporary look at important issues in insurance economics

Optimal Capital Utilization by Financial Firms: Evidence from the Property-Liability Insurance Industry

Data envelopment analysis, capital structure, efficiency, property-liability insurance, organizational form.,

Accounting standards and information: inferences from cross-listed financial firms

Publicly traded financial firms within the European Union will be required to adhere to International Accounting Standards (IAS) in their financial reporting beginning in 2005, which can entail a higher degree of financial disclosure than was previously mandated under national accounting standards. A number of European financial firms had previously subjected themselves to additional disclosure by listing their stock on U.S. exchanges, which obligates them to reconcile their financial accounts to U.S. GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles). Among national accounting systems, U.S. GAAP is considered to be both among the strictest and the most similar to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). To test whether U.S. GAAP reconciliation effectively enhances disclosure, we examine several measures of transparency for the cross-listed firms, relative both to pre-listing measures and to a control sample of firms that have not cross-listed. Our measures include bid-ask spreads, earnings forecast errors, analyst coverage, dispersion in earnings expectations, and disagreement between Moody’s and S&P’s bond ratings. We find evidence that cross-listing increases transparency in at least some cases. Our cross-sectional results also distinguish a handful of European financial firms that had already adopted IFRS before the European Commission announced that IAS would be required in the near future, with results similar to those of the cross-listed firms. Accordingly, to the extent that commitment to increased transparency has been a motivation for cross-listing, the adoption of IAS in Europe may reduce the incentives for European firms to cross-list in the United States.Accounting - Standards ; International finance

Public information and coordination: evidence from a credit registry expansion. Working Paper

Abstract This paper provides evidence that lenders to a …rm close to distress have incentives to coordinate: lower …nancing by one lender reduces …rm creditworthiness and causes other lenders to reduce …nancing. To isolate the coordination channel from lenders' joint reaction to new information, we exploit a natural experiment that made lenders' negative private assessments about their borrowers public. We show that lenders, while learning nothing new about the …rm, reduce credit in anticipation of the reaction by other lenders to the same …rm. The results show that public information exacerbates lender coordination and increases the incidence of …rm …nancial distress