Knowledge that Transforms

Using VAR and Local Projections models, enhanced with macroeconomic factors and monetary policy shocks, we investigate the underlying mechanisms through which the Fed’s and ECB’s react to bank reactions of geopolitical risks between January 1994 and March 2024. Our findings reveal that central banks react to geopolitical risk events by tightening monetary policy to fend off potential inflationary pressures. However, the effect is often temporary, as policymakers typically adopt accommodative measures during economic expansions and shift to tighter policies during contractions. Analyzing reactions based on central bank presidents' tenures, we find that while earlier responses were limited, in recent years, both central banks have reacted more strongly and immediately, reflecting their growing concern over geopolitical risks. Furthermore, we document that the Fed adopted a more accommodative stance in response to bilateral geopolitical risk shocks between the US and China, driven by changes in capital flows and trade activities. In contrast, the ECB’s responses were more consistently contractionary, particularly in periods of heightened inflation concerns or when geopolitical tensions threatened price stability within the euro area.

We study how regulation shapes the interaction between financial fragility and bank liquidity management, and propose a rationale for the complementarity between bank recovery and resolution planning. To this end, we analyze an economy in which a resolution authority arranges a bank resolution plan to suspend deposit withdrawals and create a “good bank” at a cost in the event of a depositors’ run. In such a framework, banks find it optimal to establish recovery plans in advance, specifying how to manage liquidity during runs. However, such plans are time inconsistent, and resolution authorities need powers to force their implementation at times of financial fragility .

This paper investigates the impact of country-level governance on corporate investment efficiency using data from Indian-listed firms between 2009 and 2022. Additionally, we explore how country-level governance interacts with firm-level corporate governance to influence investment inefficiency. Using World Bank's worldwide governance indicators, our findings from panel econometric models reveal that country-level governance and its subcomponents (political stability, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, control of corruption, and voice and accountability) negatively affect investment inefficiency, underinvestment, and overinvestment. This suggests that robust governance at country-level serves as a control mechanism, reducing companies' likelihood of investing above or below optimal levels. Furthermore, we find that the effect of firm-level corporate governance (measured using a newly constructed governance index) on investment inefficiency is more pronounced in weak country-level governance environments, indicating a substitutive relationship. Similar patterns are observed in overinvestment and underinvestment scenarios. This evidence implies that when country-level governance is inadequate in mitigating agency conflicts and information asymmetries, firm-level corporate governance mechanisms become crucial for promoting investment efficiency. The robustness of our results is ensured through various methodological approaches. Sample selection bias is addressed using entropy balancing, while endogeneity concerns are mitigated with a combination of two-stage least squares, firm fixed effects, and a two-step generalized method of moments. Additionally, our findings remain consistent when using different proxies for both dependent and independent variables. Our empirical investigation provides valuable insights for regulators, policymakers, and corporate stakeholders in developing efficient investment policies.

We investigate the impact of “learning from peers” on the fundraising abilities of startup companies. Employing data on the financing rounds of privately owned portfolio companies, we find that companies observe the round amounts of their most successful peers and learn to negotiate higher round amounts with venture capital investors. We further show that the number of common directors or venture capital firms between portfolio companies and their most successful peers has a positive impact on the round amounts of these portfolio companies, which supports the existence of conversational learning. Moreover, observational learning from peers is higher in hot markets, where investors rely on less costly information on peers. Our findings confirm that both observational and conversational learning allow portfolio companies to be in a better negotiating position, thus enhancing their ability to secure funding and invest in their growth.

This study examines the effects of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance on bond return volatility. After controlling for bond characteristics and firm fundamentals, we find a robust positive relationship between ESG performance and bond return volatility. The empirical results demonstrate that the impact on bond return volatility is primarily driven by ESG strengths rather than concerns. The results are robust to alternative measures, sample periods, and endogeneity controls. Furthermore, the effect of ESG performance is more pronounced for firms with opportunistic managers and poor information environments.

In this study, we consider for the first time whether and how stock liquidity impacts corporate climate performance in China. We find that an increase in stock liquidity is highly associated with lower carbon emissions. To address endogeneity concerns, we exploit a unique quasi-natural experiment in China— the stock market liberalization (Shanghai-Shenzhen Hong Kong Stock Connect). Using difference-in-differences (DID) estimations, we find that carbon emissions for treatment firms substantially decrease after the stock market liberalization. The impact of stock liquidity is more pronounced for enterprises facing severe financial constraints, greater equity dependence, and operating in pollution-intensive sectors. Similarly, we find that external monitoring, carbon abatement investment, and green innovation are plausible channels through which stock liquidity drives carbon emissions reduction. We further find that the sensitivity of corporate climate performance to improved stock liquidity becomes stronger following the Paris Agreement. Overall, we uncover new evidence on the impact of stock liquidity on corporate climate performance, expanding our understanding of the role of financial markets towards a greener economy.

We examine whether gender diversity at the target firm influences acquisition decisions by gender-diverse firms. Our findings show that gender-diverse acquirers are more likely to select gender-diverse targets over male-only firms. This preference is driven by specific attributes of female directors at the target firm, such as their educational and professional qualifications, networking abilities, functional experience, and industry expertise. Gender-diverse acquirers pay a lower premium to gender-diverse targets compared to male-only targets, and these acquisitions are positively received by the market, reflected in significant announcement-period abnormal returns. Additionally, gender-diverse firms that acquire gender-diverse targets show stronger post-acquisition performance compared to those acquiring male-only targets. These findings remain robust after addressing potential endogeneity concerns, including omitted variable bias and reverse causality.

We investigate the resilience of the South African banking sector by applying a dynamic agent-based model and the DebtRank algorithm. In contrast to previous studies focusing on listed banks, our methodology includes both listed and non-listed institutions that make up the banking industry, thereby capturing the systemic importance and vulnerability of all banks within the interbank market network. Our findings indicate that while larger banks exhibit greater systemic importance, a statistically significant correlation exists between a bank’s interbank-lending-to-equity ratio and vulnerability. Moreover, a bank’s size and specific interbank activities influence its systemic contribution, both in terms of importance and vulnerability. These insights offer policymakers an empirically grounded framework for improving financial stability monitoring and risk mitigation efforts.

We exploit exogenous shocks to institutional investors’ portfolios to show that managers engage in significantly more stakeholder-related misconduct when institutional investors are distracted. Additional cross-sectional tests reveal that managerial career concerns and risk-taking equity incentives strongly moderate this relationship, suggesting that managers weigh the potential benefits and risks before engaging in misconduct during these periods. Finally, we provide evidence that the results are more pronounced when especially those institutional investors who are likely to be motivated monitors of the managers become distracted.

Enhancing climate information disclosure quality in the banking sector improves transparency, reduces information asymmetry, and strengthens financial stability. We explore the effect of high-quality climate information disclosures, extracted from 271 U.S. banks’ annual reports from 2015 to 2024, on systemic risk. We use the deep learning model CLIMATEBERT to identify climate-related risk, neutral, and opportunity texts in U.S.-listed banks’ annual reports, focusing on their specificity. Based on these texts, and banks’ actual transition and physical risks, we construct a climate information disclosure quality index. This index includes non-symbolic and non-selective disclosures, measuring the transparency of banks’ climate disclosures. We find that improved climate disclosure quality reduces information asymmetry, mitigates market risk, and weakens systemic risk. Endogeneity tests and robustness checks support the findings. Increased investor attention amplifies the positive impact of climate disclosures. Finally, for financially unhealthy banks, the effect of enhanced disclosure quality is more significant.