This study investigates the relationship between credit ratings and firm innovation activities using a cross-country sample over the 1995–2020 period. Exploiting the setting of rating agencies’ sovereign ceiling policies, our main analysis shows that a one-notch reduction in corporate credit ratings engendered by sovereign downgrades, on average, leads to a 5.90% reduction in research and development (R&D) spending. We identify the substitution of external acquisitions for internal expenditures and the increase in creditor control as the underlying mechanisms of the causal relation. Moreover, the negative impact of credit rating downgrades on R&D investment results in deterioration in patent output and firm performance. The cross-sectional analysis shows that the observed effects on innovation and firm performance are concentrated in firms with higher external finance dependence or more growth options.

This article analyzes how creditors’ simultaneous debt and equity holdings affect firm investment policies. We find that firms with dual ownership are less likely to have capital expenditure restrictions in loan contracts, and the relation varies in predicted ways with the monitoring needs of borrowers and the monitoring capacity of dual owners. A less frequent use of capital expenditure restrictions, however, does not result in borrowers’ risk-shifting. Dual ownership firms are also more likely to be granted an unconditional waiver and do not significantly reduce debt issuance or investment expenditures after a financial covenant violation. Our results highlight how dual ownership can help mitigate shareholder–creditor conflicts.

We investigate whether foreign bank penetration affects the risk of domestic banks in emerging economies. By using bank-level data from 35 markets during the period of 2000–2014, we find significant evidence that the risk of domestic banks increases with the presence of foreign banks in the host economy, and this finding is shown to be consistent in a series of robustness tests. We also find that the incidence of such effects is more pronounced for domestic banks which are less efficient and less based on traditional activities. Foreign banks exert more pronounced impacts on domestic banks’ risk when they enter the host market via M&A, as opposed to greenfield investments, and when they belong to foreign conglomerates which provide strong internal support.

We analyze the effect of directors' and officers' liability insurance (D&O insurance) on the spreads charged on bank loans. We find that higher levels of D&O insurance coverage are associated with higher loan spreads and that this relation depends on loan characteristics in economically sensible ways and is attenuated by monitoring mechanisms. This association between loan spreads and D&O insurance coverage is robust to controlling for endogeneity (because both could be related to firm risk). Our evidence suggests that lenders view D&O insurance coverage as increasing credit risk (potentially via moral hazard or information asymmetry). Further analyses show that higher levels of D&O insurance coverage are associated with greater risk taking and higher probabilities of financial restatement due to aggressive financial reporting. While greater use of D&O insurance increases the cost of debt, we find some evidence that D&O insurance coverage appears to improve the value of large increases in capital expenditure for firms with better internal and external governance.

This paper addresses the impact of foreign ownership on the risk-taking behavior of banks. Using bank-level panel data of more than 1300 commercial banks in 32 emerging economies during 2000–2013, we find that foreign owned banks take on more risk than their domestic counterparts. We further examine several factors that may potentially contribute to foreign banks’ differentiated riskiness from four perspectives, namely, foreign banks’ informational disadvantages, agency problems, the contagious effect of parent banks’ financial conditions and the disparity between home and host markets. We find supportive evidence that these factors play a significant role in affecting foreign banks’ risk-taking.