We provide a cross-country and cross-bank analysis of the financial determinants of the Great Financial Crisis using data on 83 countries from the period 1998 to 2006. First, our cross-country results show that the probability of suffering the crisis in 2008 was larger for countries having higher levels of credit deposit ratio whereas it was lower for countries characterized by higher levels of: (i) net interest margin, (ii) concentration in the banking sector, (iii) restrictions to bank activities, (iv) private monitoring. The bank-level analysis reinforces these results and shows that the latter factors are also key determinants across banks, thus explaining the probability of bank crisis. Our findings contribute to extend the analytical toolkit available for macro and micro-prudential regulation.

We study regression discontinuity designs when covariates are included in the estimation. We examine local polynomial estimators that include discrete or continuous covariates in an additive separable way, but without imposing any parametric restrictions on the underlying population regression functions. We recommend a covariate-adjustment approach that retains consistency under intuitive conditions and characterize the potential for estimation and inference improvements. We also present new covariate-adjusted mean-squared error expansions and robust bias-corrected inference procedures, with heteroskedasticity-consistent and cluster-robust standard errors. We provide an empirical illustration and an extensive simulation study. All methods are implemented in R and Stata software packages.

This paper shows that yields to maturity of U.S. Treasury bills are cointegrated, and that during periods when the Federal Reserve specifically targeted short-term interest rates, the spreads between yields of different maturity define the cointegrating vectors.This cointegrating relationship implies that a single non-stationary common factor underlies the time series behavior of each yield to maturity and that risk premia are stationary.An error correction model which uses spreads as Ihe error correction terms is unstable over the Federal Reserve's policy regime changes, but a model using post 1982 data is stable and is shown to be useful for forecasting changes in yields.

We experimentally examine the effects of trait professional skepticism on fraud brainstorming performance. We find that groups with a minority, but not a majority, of high trait skeptics develop more fraud ideas than control groups with no high trait skeptics. Mediation analyses indicate that minority high trait skeptic groups also assess higher fraud risk, in part because they consider more fraud ideas. Low trait skeptics who brainstorm in groups with a minority of high trait skeptics tend to view the minority high trait skeptic as the best member of the group because of that member's unique insights. Their individual, post-brainstorming fraud risk assessments remain high, indicating conversion to the minority (skeptical) viewpoint. Our study contributes to the brainstorming literature by highlighting the importance of group composition. It suggests that firms can promote skeptical team judgments by leveraging individuals' high trait skepticism in thoughtfully composed interacting groups.

This study shows that the recent trajectory of a firm's profits predicts future profitability and stock returns. The predictive information contained in the trend of profitability is not subsumed by the level of profitability, earnings momentum, or other well-known determinants of stock returns. The profit trend also predicts the earnings surprise one quarter later, and analyst forecast errors over the following 12 months, suggesting that sophisticated investors underreact to the information in the profit trend. On the other hand, we find no evidence of investor overreaction, and our results cannot be explained by well-known risk factors.

We study a disclosure decision for a firm's manager with many sources of private information. The presence of multiple numerical signals provides the manager with an opportunity to hide information via aggregation, presenting net amounts in order to show information in its best light. We show that this ability to aggregate fundamentally changes the nature of voluntary disclosure, due to the market's inability to verify that a report is free of strategic aggregation. We find that, in equilibrium, the manager fully discloses if and only if the manager's private information makes the firm look sufficiently weak. By separating bad news from good news, a disaggregate report informs the market of as much offsetting news as possible, revealing how close the news is to a neutral benchmark. The result is, therefore, pooling at the top and separation at the bottom, the opposite of what transpires with a single news source.

Reviews the book "European Financial Reporting: The Netherlands," by J.H. Beeny and J.G. Chastney.

Recent progress has outmoded many traditional standards of financial administration of governmental units. Among the more significant changes in concept are (1) greater recognition that financial management must be an integral part of total management at each level to be effective; (2) greater emphasis on the inter-relationships of programming, budgeting, accounting and reporting, and (3) greater awareness and acceptance of the need for variable patterns of accounting compatible with assignments of managerial responsibility and the type of operation being conducted. This proposed statement is an effort to express in broad terms the current accounting and related standards of governmental financial administration. Preparation of a budget for a governmental unit should begin with a determination of the work to be done and the expenses of doing it. Such a cost-based budget and the cash requirements stemming therefrom should be submitted to the legislative branch as a basis for appropriation action. After legislative action, cost-based budgets should be used to control work being done. The cost-based budget is the standard against which the actual costs incurred are to be measured. Responsibility for review, appraisal and action rests on supervision at every level. An independent financial examination and review of operations should be made.

We investigate the effect of regulatory enforcement actions on banks' reputation by estimating the effect of non-compliance with laws and regulations among lead arrangers on the structure of syndicated loans. Consistent with a regulatory reputational stigma, a punished lead arranger increases her loan share to entice participants to continue to co-finance the loan. Consequently, when punished lead arranger initiates a new syndicated loan, then this loan tends to be more concentrated and co-funded by participants with previous collaboration with the lead arranger. However, the observed share increases by punished lead arrangers are seemingly mitigated by extending the loan guarantees, performance pricing provisions, and covenants.

Many school districts with centralized school choice adopt strategy-proof assignment mechanisms to relieve applicants from needing to strategize based on beliefs about their own admissions chances. This article shows that beliefs about admissions chances shape choice outcomes even when the assignment mechanism is strategy-proof by influencing how applicants search for schools and that “smart matching platforms” that provide live feedback on admissions chances help applicants search more effectively. Motivated by a model in which applicants engage in costly search for schools and overoptimism can lead to undersearch, we use data from a large-scale survey of choice participants in Chile to show that learning about schools is hard, beliefs about admissions chances guide the decision to stop searching, and applicants systematically underestimate nonplacement risk. We use RCT and RD research designs to evaluate scaled live feedback policies in the Chilean and New Haven choice systems. Twenty-two percent of applicants submitting applications where risks of nonplacement are high respond to warnings by adding schools to their lists, reducing nonplacement risk by 58% and increasing test score value added at the schools where they enroll by 0.10 standard deviations. Reducing the burden of school choice requires not just strategy-proofness inside the centralized system but also choice supports for the strategic decisions that inevitably remain outside of it.