Using the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) as a laboratory, this paper examines the impacts of bank bailouts on bank-dependent clients. We find that large TARP recipient banks reduce credit supply to dependent borrowers in the post-TARP period. A large fraction of credit supply reduction is due to regulatory uncertainty on account of an increased likelihood of fines. Liquidity hoarding by TARP banks also drives part of the reduction in credit supply. Relationship borrowers experience a valuation loss around the announcements of their main banks’ TARP approvals consistent with a credit supply reduction.

Unlike broad-based equity ownership by employees, ownership of company debt by rank-and-file employees has not received much attention. We argue that company debt held by employees in the form of in-company deposits can monitor risk-taking and facilitate risk discovery. Employee deposits have been historically widely used in Japan. For a sample of 2,104 Japanese firms, using an identification strategy that utilizes a new law in 2003 that changed the priority of employee deposits in bankruptcy and led to large-scale withdrawals of employee deposits, we find that employee deposits mitigate firms’ risk-taking behavior and reduce the agency cost of debt. Received November 2, 2018; editorial decision May 1, 2019 by Editor Andrew Ellul. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

We investigate tax incidence reflected in the pricing of syndicated loans and argue that loan spread increases in bank income taxes of borrowers’ home states. We compare borrowers in states with differing bank tax rates and demonstrate the presence of tax incidence on borrowers with causality coming from bank taxes. Tax incidence on borrowers increases with local loan market concentration and pre-existing lending relationships. Further, a lack of tax deductibility of loan loss provisions enhances tax incidence. We conclude that bank income taxation, though specifically targeted at banks, is partially passed through to borrowers and increases their cost of debt.

ABSTRACT This study examines the spillover effect of bank financial misconduct on the uninsured deposits of peer banks within local markets. We first validate that misconduct banks experience an increase in deposit spreads and a corresponding outflow of deposits following the misconduct. We then show local peer banks exhibit divergent deposit responses, contingent on how misconduct is perceived by information recipients in different economic contexts. During normal periods, depositors receiving a negative signal about bank misconduct reallocate their funds from misconduct banks to local peers, a local reallocation effect that decreases deposit spreads and increases deposit inflows for peer banks. Cross‐sectional analysis further reveals that this local reallocation effect is more pronounced for financially sophisticated depositors, amplified when peer banks have strong fundamentals, but attenuated when misconduct banks are financially sound. During financial crisis periods, however, bank misconduct leads to withdrawals from both misconduct banks and their peer banks, a local contagion effect whereby local peer banks face increased deposit spreads and deposit outflows following the misconduct.

ABSTRACT This study exploits the staggered adoption of the inevitable disclosure doctrine (IDD) by U.S. state courts as an exogenous shock that generates variations in the proprietary costs of disclosure. We find that firms respond to IDD adoption by reducing the level of disclosure regarding their customers’ identities, supporting the proprietary cost hypothesis. Our results are stronger for firms in industries with a higher degree of entry threats, for firms in more volatile industries, and for firms with a lower degree of external financing dependence. Overall, this study represents one of the first efforts in identifying the causal effect of proprietary costs of disclosure on the supply of disclosure.

We investigate the extent to which capitalization of expected capital gains taxes and the lock-in effect induced by the capital gains tax rate differential simultaneously impact the pricing and underpricing of initial public offerings (IPOs). Using a large sample of IPOs from 1987 to 2010, we estimate regressions of offer prices and first-day underpricing on tax rates. Supporting tax capitalization, IPO offer prices decrease in long-term capital gains taxes. Supporting lock-in, IPO underpricing increases in the long-term and short-term tax rate differential. These effects are consistent with capital gains taxes simultaneously reducing IPO proceeds and exacerbating IPO underpricing.

This paper explores how the emergence of generative artificial intelligence is reshaping the information environment in capital markets. Leveraging an unexpected ban on ChatGPT in Italy, we examine its impact on the information processing capabilities of market participants. We employ metrics for AI-generated text detection to show that the ban coincides with decreased AI usage by domestic financial analysts and fewer earnings forecasts issued relative to foreign analysts covering the same firm. The negative effects are more pronounced among analysts whose pre-ban reports are more consistent with AI use or analysts with a technical background. The ban also diminishes forecast accuracy, increases reliance on industry-specific information, and reduces information efficiency. Furthermore, investor reactions to earnings announcements become more pronounced, and bid–ask spreads widen, reflecting lower market efficiency.

ABSTRACT We document peer effect as an important factor in determining corporate voluntary disclosure policies. Our identification strategy relies on a discontinuity in the distribution of institutional ownership caused by the annual Russell 1000/2000 index reconstitution. Around the threshold of the Russell 1000/2000 index, the top Russell 2000 index firms experience a significant jump in institutional ownership compared with their closely neighbored bottom Russell 1000 index firms due to index funds' benchmarking strategies. The increase in institutional ownership and resultant improvement in the information environment of the top Russell 2000 index firms create pressures on their industry peers to increase voluntary disclosures. Consistent with this prediction, we find that the discontinuously higher institutional ownership of the top Russell 2000 index firms significantly increases industry peers' likelihood and frequency of issuing management forecasts. Further analyses show that such an effect could be driven by firms' incentive to compete for capital. JEL Classifications: G23; G34; M41; D80. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.

We find that a borrower default causes an increase in investors' EDGAR searches for non-defaulting borrowers that share the same relationship bank. This effect is more pronounced when the lending relationship between the defaulting borrower and the defaulted-upon bank is stronger and when the reliance of non-defaulting borrowers on the defaulted-upon bank is greater. The co-movement of information acquisition for non-defaulting borrowers increases after the peer default, which leads to a co-movement in the issuance of management forecasts and a co-movement in stock returns. In sum, our research supports a network effect of peer defaults on information acquisition.